My rant, I dont expect anyone to read this, it will have things I love and things I hate about it, but it will incompass all the civs I have played (2-5, alpha centauri, civ 2 test of time, civ 2 call to power)
Specialists
I like what has been becoming of these, I am actually not that great of a micromanager, but since the easy civ 2 version of the three types, it has become quite devolped albiet I suck at using them efficently.
Bomard ability
I love it, and wish civ 4 kept the idea, glad to see it is back in CIV 5
Policy vs Civic vs static government types
The Policy was a decent Idea to circumvent the "we lose the prior ability of government if we had to change it", government in my opinion have two factors, evolving (policy type) vs revolutionary (all the other types) any governmental program should have a negative effect as well as a positive one, which is why I prefer the revolutionary type over the policy type, if there was a way to merge them both, I wouldnt mind trying that out, either case people will usually rush to get what they would use more often for their current needs. But due to a lack of negative effects albiet the you can only have this policy and not another at the time, isnt as negative as it could be, I dont know many that would pay the cost of a certain policy and than give it up when another policy became open, expecially due that it takes many hours to pay for a policy. The revolutionary system of governments also added a diplomatic aspect in CIV 4, which atleast added a kink in how you dealt with other AI's.
Politics
I love civ for its war game aspect, but I play it as if I really was trying to run a government in this game, usually peaceful til someone wanted to fight, not just to fight but for a reason, civ V lacks this, I wont go into depth as it is a known issue for the people who actually enjoy that style of play.
Generalized Happiness
This goes back to micromanaging an empire, however, it also added a quality to the game before CIV V, you had to make sure you individual cities were content on your empire, I did not mind the city flipping even when you could toggle it off after a conquest, i never did, because in real life, you can see that happening. A balance between the two I wouldnt mind seeing, but going to the extreme of, well this city is specilized in making everyone happy so your empire is happy regardless if the other towns hate you.
Hex vs square tiles
I prefer the square tiles, but I can live with hex, just seemed to me that it was just trying to please certain board gamers over regular civ players.
1upt vs stack of doom
I hate them both, almost equally, but I fear the 1upt is worse off due to the size of the game as well as the AI will NEVER understand it, no matter how much coding in place, it is exploitable as much as a stack of doom is. Collateral damage was a great concept and I wished it was developed more. More units you had stacked, the more damage incurred to all units in that stack. Killing off the whole pile was a bit extreme in the earlier civs as we all know as well. Bombarding units in defense, when a stack approached a free fire from the defense unit could of been incorporated as I have seen in one of the versions I have played but it only spread out the damage as opposed to actually causing more significant damge to having a lot of troops in the stack. Causing more damage to each unit due to having more units in stack would force players to divide the piles atleast to keep the damage lower. Also, however, this may not work for AI coding, having certian number of units per terrain type, each unit having a space cost depending on size and the terrain type, you can place more men than tanks in say a forest as opposed to a plain.
Unique Units/Unique Abilities
I never cared for this in any Civilization game, Master of Orion atleast put into negative effects for each positive to keep the civilization in balance to the others. However, having this feature always disrupted game balance since this game is built to be on a randomized map. Scenario play I can understand this aspect. My best suggestion would be to allow each empire to have a certain number of elite units. Your facing a horse loving empire, you can have up to 5 elite (unique ability) spearmen, you want to change over to having a unique ability archer, youll have to disband or promote one of your elite spearmen to open up a space. Unique Abilities, well, I can probably put this under a Policy under a civic type as stated before, your an island nation, you might have a use for that +1 to naval movement, but if I pick a nation that has that for default, I roll a landlocked area, Im stuck with a useless attribute.
(Above feature including national politics)
Without the default attributes, the AI starting next to horses are generically coded to wanting to become a mounted military nation, they would seek government policy types to push for better mounted units even elite units. AI governments knowing what access other nations have, can push for a way to circumvent that bonus. Same thing with gold/gem mines, a nation may go after policies that would increase trade for their nation, this would make nations more generic, but more immersive on what they were giving in the game. Like Civ 2, the name of the nation was defined by that game, not what they are in real life.
AI personalities
Overall up to civ 4, they were getting to be their own type of identity, I didnt mind so much about the religeon or particular civic they wanted you to have, but that is now thrown out with the streamlined version of civ V. With the above idea, depending on how they develope the lands they were given, atleast they would have more of an idea on what they would prefer you to have and not to have.
Unit modification Dream Idea (will never expect this)
An alternative to elite units or unique units, was the ability as in Master of Orion or Alpha Centauri, when you researched a technology, you can (rebuild) the tech onto an already built unit or prototype a new unit. I enjoyed this micromanaging part of the game as it also made units more deer to the user than just pumping out units for the sake of pure RPS, (i love rps style dont get me wrong) but it was a nice feature in those games.
Trade network
Call to power, you had lines of trading, civ 2, you actually had to build a unit and move them to make a trade link. An overlay of trading resources to see the paths of you and other nations (as it was never really a big secret of trade routes) in the game to effectively blockade or even steal the resource being traded. The game already has the feature of trade lines, but atleast having a way to make it visiable to allow a more effective strategy to controlling it. Possbily even addapting the steal a resource for your own use would be a dream idea. Enemy is trading Iron, you steal it for a turn, start building a unit, that material is now used up till that unit dies.
More Ideas to come
I just wanted to get this out of my system so I dont further rant on other peoples posts about certain aspects of the game. Ill have further rants I am sure, and Ill just place it here, to keep the place looking somewhat tidy.
