Here's the result of lenghty talks with a fan of civ and friend of mine. Here's what I want to see in Civ5.
* I want to play a dynasty rather than a single leader over millenaries. I want it like we've seen in TotalWar. I want to be able to marry my second-degree half-witted cousin to the beautiful daughter of the Portuguese king in order to broker an alliance with him or just annexing part of his territory.
I want political assassination (performed by spies), rumours and God knows what.
This seems like a good idea. It might be a bit complicated, though, coming up with a whole bunch of different family members.
* I want each civ to have its own tech tree. How come everybody ends up with marines and F16, regardless of who is in first position or even if the Americans are playing? I want to see the world turning to an ecofriendly, peacemongering utopia because the Native Americans are in first place. I want Native American techs like Shamanism to appear in every other civ's tech tree and I want these to be appealing more (costing less) than their original tech, in effect tending to uniformize the world. But if I play the Germans I still want to be able to research (at great cost) armour vehicles and combustion in order to produce an army of panzers to get rid of those damn tree-hugging injuns.
Speaking of techs, I want to customize my techs so that if, say, I have lot of muddy plains near my cities and I need, say, a new weapon, I can ask my scientists to invent some kind of combustible using that mud mixed with some other ingredients, to be thrown up by catapults. If what I need is water filtering for producing more food, I want them to invent some kind of filter using this mud. If I need money, maybe we can market the mud as healing skin-appliance or whatelse.
The problem with customisable techs is that it is way too open ended. The game would not be able to deal with it effectively. As for more techs in general, that is an idea that is getting some strong discussion. Perhaps you should have your say
here.
* If I choose to war constantly and behaving badly, I want my population to get used to it and even support it over times. I want Peace Weariness in that case and We Love The King Day in my cities because I got kicked of the UN.
This is probably a bit unrealistic. Perhaps your people could become accustomed to war over time, but realistically, their is always war weariness, despite militaristic societies. Also, this would undermine the detriment of war, and make it too easy.
* I want an extended conception of morale: I want to be able to play a complete bad guy. I want to produce drugs and sell it via a parallel economy, I want to sell weapons, to print fake money, to smuggle fake goods. I want to support terrorism.
AS much as this is a good idea, it is, firstly, complicated, and secondly, something that the developers would never include in the game due to media and customer lash-back.
I want to be able to genocide. I want to say: "let's get rid of these damn buddhists/Vikings/communists" and do it, starting the epuration in my own cities and also my vassals then trying to submit other civs to my insane dreams. Of course there would be strong downsides for this: I would lose the support of any nation hovering the persecuted minority or just caring a little bit for its image, I would be banned from the UN and have recurring nightmares where little Viking babies come back to haunt me. I don't want it too realist though, ofc nobody wants to see Civ becoming a Shoah simulator where you place your railways and death camps for the best rending.
Any inclusion of genocide in the game would conjure headlines of, 'Game allows recreation of Holocaust'. Not good for publicity, and it's not really a good thing to be seemingly advertise and condone. I assume that there would be some sort of benefit for this, or it would be useless, but this would just make it worse, in terms of publicity.
* I want pollution back, only naughtier. I want to dump my garbage in the ocean then be decried by the international community once a NGO discovers it, losing tons of relations points. I want then to send my toxic waste to third world countries in exchange for cash, supposedly to be treated there but in fact being dispersed on agrary lands.
Again, the problem with this is that it is way too complicated to include in the game. Unless the game was completely redone on a whole new level of complexity, this would not be possible to include. It is a very particular event.
* I want wars with a frontline and no stack of doom. I want my catapult to survive when attacking, giving me the incentive to use them against grouped enemies, therefore preventing the use of SoD.
Yeah, this is a good idea. I've always thought that siege weapons should be attached to units in the same way that Great Generals are. Then, the unit could decide to bombard for a turn, or attack (using the might of the base unit and the siege weapon), or even bombard a group of units, causing collateral damage. They should not have to go into battle, as such, to cause this collateral damage.
* I want a distinction between reforms, coup and revolution. What we have in the civ series technically is reforms: new ways of government chosen and implemented by the leader in place and accepted more or less widely by the population. A revolution would be when your people revolt totally on its own, demanding a new form of government. You are then confronted with a choice : repress and risk seeing the revolution going on or accept your people's will and shift to an uncalled-for form of government. A coup would be a foreign attempt to overthrow your dynasty and seizing part of your territory. Of course I want to foment coups in other civs.
This is a really good idea. Perhaps you could start a thread on it, or something.
This would also be good, and would make health a more important aspect of the game. I mean, sure, it can limit growth as it is, but it doesn't actually cause anything other than stagnation, or some possible starvation.
*I want more spy missions.
I don't know much about BtS, but I gather that there are lots of spy options. More would, again, make it very complicated.