Civilization 5

[rysmiel]

Reflecting on things a bit more in terms of gameplay I really can't see a problem by allowing food to be shared on a national level. If you really want to use all your farms to support a size 70+ city, that's fine, it will just mean that your other cities are smaller. In addition, the health and happiness systems already put a soft cap on population size.

I wonder whether there's any point in disagreeing here, because the factors you quote as limiting the reasons why I would see this as a problem are based on things I also see as problems with Civ IV.

Using all your food to support a size 70+ city could become unbalancing depending on an awful lot of other factors in the game, anything that effects the equivalent of
a Civ 4 legendary city, a Civ 3 20k culture victory city, or a Civ 2 Super Science City. It depends on the synergies, really. If there are ways in which building various wonders and improvements in the same place gives a synergistic effect greater than building them separately [ for example, building the Colossus to give 50% extra trade, then in the same city building Copernicus' Observatory to give an extra 50% boost to science atop that, being significantly more useful in terms of improved science performance than building them in different cities ] then any mechanic that supports building a big city fast makes a big difference; it's not so much the 70+ city that really seems unbalancing there, as the city that gets to size 22 while everyone else is still scrabbling to get to size 4 or 5.

If it really becomes a problem you can always just throw a hard cap on city size.

I'm not in favour of an absolute hard cap on city size, but different hard caps that need specific buildings to get past are another aspect of pre-Civ IV versions of Civ that i would like to see back in the game.

Hammers are a bit more problematic. I'm not entirely convinced that sharing all hammers on a national level is a good idea. For starters it makes wonders problematic. More importantly I could see that the "winning" strategy would just be to dump all your hammers into one city every turn, this way you get to build something immediately.

Which is one reason why I favour transferring productivity via units, which it takes time and commitment of resources to build, and then time to move to where you want them. It becomes an effort to do this, both in terms of where you direct your productivity and in terms of how much work the player has to do, which seems appropriate for getting the reward.

 

[rysmiel]

You can put "routes" in the game without neccesitating the construction of a caravan. The Total War series for example does this.

The easiest way would be to just use the capital as a hub. If you cut the route between your enemies production city and his capital, then he can not send its hammers to the national level and it cannot take food from the national level. You could even institute a system where you "steal" both easily enough.

You can even put a little guy in a wagon or a tiny ship on the map that can be raided if that's what you want.

I'm not at all opposed to the creating of geographical trade routes, granted that they don't have the exploitable weaknesses of the Civ 2 city-to-city trade routes. I just think it's bad gameplay for the precise mechanic of how one exchanges whatever one is actually exchanging with the AI in a trade to be something you sit down and agree to that then works, without any consideration of where in your empire and the AI's empire it is going to or coming from. There are degrees of freedom for the player that are lost in not having the resources or whatever be physically moved in caravans or the equivalent.

 

[morss_4]

Using all your food to support a size 70+ city could become unbalancing depending on an awful lot of other factors in the game, anything that effects the equivalent of
a Civ 4 legendary city, a Civ 3 20k culture victory city, or a Civ 2 Super Science City. It depends on the synergies, really. If there are ways in which building various wonders and improvements in the same place gives a synergistic effect greater than building them separately [ for example, building the Colossus to give 50% extra trade, then in the same city building Copernicus' Observatory to give an extra 50% boost to science atop that, being significantly more useful in terms of improved science performance than building them in different cities ] then any mechanic that supports building a big city fast makes a big difference;

Well first of all, like I said the health and happiness systems put a soft cap on effective city size. I guess you don't like that, because that's not how it was done in Civ 2 or whatever, but I like the new systems. Civil disorder was a pain and I greatly prefer the soft cap that health places on a city to the frustrating hard cap based on aqueducts and what not that older games had.

You may not like the soft cap the health and happiness systems introduce (or at least the way they introduce it), but it's the ideal way to deal with this issue. You can have the 70+ city if you want, but if you lose a bunch of food to health to do it, and you need a large military to keep the populace in check it may not be worth the effort.

If it IS worth the effort then you have to evaluate whether that's detrimental to gameplay and if you determine it is you either stiffen the soft cap at city sizes over 25 or so or you throw in a hard one.

Any way you slice it I think the idea is easily workable.

Second of all I think the culture victory needs to be reworked, but that's a separate issue.

it's not so much the 70+ city that really seems unbalancing there, as the city that gets to size 22 while everyone else is still scrabbling to get to size 4 or 5.

And this is not an issue, because you are not able to transfer food at that point in the game. It is only in the mid to late game that I feel this option should be available.

 

[rysmiel]

Well first of all, like I said the health and happiness systems put a soft cap on effective city size. I guess you don't like that, because that's not how it was done in Civ 2 or whatever, but I like the new systems. Civil disorder was a pain and I greatly prefer the soft cap that health places on a city to the frustrating hard cap based on aqueducts and what not that older games had.

I strongly regret the absence of the civil disorder mechanic from Civ IV; I think it greatly weakens an aspect of keeping one's empire happy and stable that previously had real bite.

That said, I'm not at all opposed to a health system in something like the same direction as Civ IV handles it. I think I would have favoured implementing it, and I expect people are going to scream at this, as something similar to corruption; that poor health diminishes one's incoming food in the same way as corruption diminishes incoming trade and waste diminishes incoming shields (and one thing I very much don't like in Civ III is that the latter two are sfaict controlled by the same underlying mechanism and it's not possible to build improvements or make decisions that affect one but not the other). I'm in favour of it depending on tech, on improvements, on surrounding terrain, and I'm also in favour of chances of losing units on unhealthy or hostile terrain, and of possibilities of plagues or the like depending on how much unhealthy (swamp or jungle, basically) terrain is within a city's radius.

Any way you slice it I think the idea is easily workable.

There ar eplenty of workable options here; I don't dislike your idea, really, it just feels to me to be a good building atop flawed foundations.

Second of all I think the culture victory needs to be reworked, but that's a separate issue.

What have you in mind ?

And this is not an issue, because you are not able to transfer food at that point in the game. It is only in the mid to late game that I feel this option should be available.

That would be one way of doing it, sure. I had been thinking more in terms of being able to transfer food in ways that got more efficient with advancing time and techs, but that did allow for early big city rushes if you put enough effort into them; at the risk of arguing from realism, for which I generally have little time, Egypt being the breadbasket of the Roman Empire is within the range of things that I think should be possible to simulate, or have situations similar to, in Civ.

 

[morss_4]

What have you in mind ?

I don't really have a victory condition in mind at the moment. I do have a couple ideas on how one might make culture more interesting on the whole. I don't think they'd be too hard to stretch into a victory condition.

This goes back to my earlier complaint that I have to build the Heroic Epic. It's a poem. You don't build poems. Some other mechanism should have been developed.

The first and most straightforward idea I had was to replace the great artists "great works" button. Instead of simply being a culture bomb, you could actually have a selection of different great works to choose from with different effects, like the Heroic Epic, or the National Epic. I still kind of like this idea.

The other idea I had was a kind of "culture tech tree" if you will. Now, I should preface this by saying I think the culture slider should be scrapped. Culture should flow entirely from artists and buildings. The idea would be that you'd have a separate tech tree, whose "currency" was culture instead of beakers. This tree could be tied to the conventional one. So for example writing could be the prerequisite for the Heroic and National Epics. Once you got writing you pick one of those to "research" and your nations culture would accumulate towards that goal. Some of these "techs" or "great works" would have various effects similar to wonders and possibly civics that exist in the game now. Some techs currently in the tech tree could be moved over to the culture tree as well, like literature, music, drama, or even military tradition.

Much like the space race is the "science" victory I could imagine a "culture victory" built off this, but I don't know what that might be.

That would be one way of doing it, sure. I had been thinking more in terms of being able to transfer food in ways that got more efficient with advancing time and techs, but that did allow for early big city rushes if you put enough effort into them; at the risk of arguing from realism, for which I generally have little time, Egypt being the breadbasket of the Roman Empire is within the range of things that I think should be possible to simulate, or have situations similar to, in Civ.

The idea can always be tweaked, but game balance issues can't really be resolved unless someone actually plays the game to identify them. You could for example allow a small amount of food to be transfered in the ancient or classical era, say 5% or something (or whatever value you decide works best) with the discovery of something like sailing. 5% over an entire empire, were you to focus it in one city, is not an insubstantial amount.

 

[Balderstrom]

Wow Culture Tech Tree, that sounds like one of the most interesting ideas I've heard in quite a while.

As Far as food transfers/trade, I still prefer the Caravan/Settler. Settlers can carry food to a new settlement. Caravans to existing ones.

Later game might allow for the "Welfare Project" which institutes a National Food Reserve that can be transferred/traded (without the need of a Caravan).

Tech's like Biology/Refrigeration/et al, increase the efficiency of the Caravan/NFR - less food loss on transfer.

 

[sangeli]

My advocacy is that once you have refrigeration, food production should be for your whole empire, not just that one city. In each city, you should have a meter for how much food each turn should grow there in order to control growth and allow metropolis to exist. With combustion, thus automobiles, cities should be able to incorporate the nearby tiles into a giant city. Due to the sprawling suburbs, unhealthiness and unhappiness should decrease also to allow larger cities. But the drawback should be more pollution (for global warming however that works in the game) because people are driving, as well as much greater oil consumption if they every quantify the resources.

If you want a culture tree you should also want to keep the slider for culture. The government can actually have an influence in this by paying actors to act, or writers to write. This actually happened with the new deal. I do agree that you shouldn't be able to build the hero's epic, it should have to come from a great artist.

One thing that would be cool is to have a real difference between the "totalitarian" and "lassie-faire" countries. The totalitarian governments should be able to control everything, as by their name, and have a huge budget. They would get more money to spend on a certain tech or to pay their army. The lassie-faire countries/civics would have a much smaller budget because of the low tax rate. Instead of having the money not from the tax rate go to science or culture, it should go nowhere. What I mean is that the free market countries can't really research or have a big army. Sounds uneven, but its not. The free market countries would get "random" things. For example, the US government didn't pay Edison to invent the lightbulb, it just happened. In the game things would just happen, like you discover a new tech because a citizen does. Also, new buildings are made without your control. If you were to quantify everything done, the free market countries would always get slightly more because they have market effenciency, but you can't choose what could be done. The best way to do this is by setting a tax rate on top of the tax rate now, which is effectively 100% because you control everything. The return for money you don't tax should be 120% or so but you don't choose what is done, it is almost random or it can be done by need. I know its kinda complicated and I did a bad job explaining.

 

[morss_4]

If you want a culture tree you should also want to keep the slider for culture. The government can actually have an influence in this by paying actors to act, or writers to write. This actually happened with the new deal. I do agree that you shouldn't be able to build the hero's epic, it should have to come from a great artist.

Well that's what the artist specialist is for.

My concerns with leaving the culture slider in are 2 fold:

1. Players may resent it if they feel they "have" to cut into science to feed their culture tree (although the culture tree will probably be largely optional.)
2. If you leave the culture slider in then you basically just have "science a" and "science b". Culture is not necessarily any different from science from a gameplay standpoint. By taking the slider out the strategies you use to progress between the trees is different. Science you essentially "buy" with commerce (which is then multiplied by libraries etc.) Culture you have to either run artists or make an effort building things like theaters and wonders to raise your culture (or possibly a mixture of the two).

As an extension of the same idea I don't think you should be able to trade culture techs like you can with science techs. Not only does it not make as much sense (culture is a property of a nation, not a commodity, it can diffuse of its own accord but it can't really be sold) but it means you can't just ignore culture and go back and buy it with assembly line or something.

 

[Balderstrom]

I was thinking a number of the Culture techs are "works of art" - Spy's might be able to steal some of the physical ones.
You could trade/share some w/ other CIVs (Musical Works), in return for Gold, ArtWorks or even regular Techs.

Random Event, bonuses to current works...
Random Event, a work of art turns out to be a forgery ;-)

You actually wouldn't necessarily need a whole separate culture tech tree.
But the current design could be broken down into
Military / Culture / Science / Religion (any missing?)
And allow you to research into multiple (2?) paths at the same time.
Military - Allows you to build Military Wonders/Units/etc. pretty much as is now. could be expanded to "equipment"
Culture - Allows you to build Culture Wonders/Units? (dunno)/Works of Art(Projects?)
etc.

Though I think either way is an interesting concept, but the tech tree could really be shaken up some. While adding a lot of fun options.

 

[rysmiel]

The other idea I had was a kind of "culture tech tree" if you will. Now, I should preface this by saying I think the culture slider should be scrapped. Culture should flow entirely from artists and buildings. The idea would be that you'd have a separate tech tree, whose "currency" was culture instead of beakers. This tree could be tied to the conventional one. So for example writing could be the prerequisite for the Heroic and National Epics. Once you got writing you pick one of those to "research" and your nations culture would accumulate towards that goal. Some of these "techs" or "great works" would have various effects similar to wonders and possibly civics that exist in the game now. Some techs currently in the tech tree could be moved over to the culture tree as well, like literature, music, drama, or even military tradition.

I really like this notion.

Much like the space race is the "science" victory I could imagine a "culture victory" built off this, but I don't know what that might be.

The logical analog in gameplay terms would be some sort of massive globally culturally dominant thing, but I don't know what that would translate to in the real world. Something like being able to create a certain number of... not a good word for it, I am thinking works that go beyond classic status into a place in the popular consciousness so that everybody recognises allusions to them - movies like Star Wars, characters like Superman, for example.

 

[rysmiel]

If you want a culture tree you should also want to keep the slider for culture.

Why ? You don't need a culture slider to control speed of development on a culture tree; you just need to focus your effort on building temples and libraries and so on. It's not competing with science, it's competing with all the other things buildings do; every temple that increases your culture is production not spent, for example, on a barracks to improve your military strength.

One thing that would be cool is to have a real difference between the "totalitarian" and "lassie-faire" countries. The totalitarian governments should be able to control everything, as by their name, and have a huge budget. They would get more money to spend on a certain tech or to pay their army. The lassie-faire countries/civics would have a much smaller budget because of the low tax rate. Instead of having the money not from the tax rate go to science or culture, it should go nowhere. What I mean is that the free market countries can't really research or have a big army. Sounds uneven, but its not. The free market countries would get "random" things. For example, the US government didn't pay Edison to invent the lightbulb, it just happened. In the game things would just happen, like you discover a new tech because a citizen does. Also, new buildings are made without your control.

I can't see myself ever wanting to play a laissez-faire government of that sort, but that's just because I'm an obsessive-compulsive control freak, I'd not be opposed to that as a government option. It seems like it could work as a middle path between totally controlled and totally blind research, to have a small proportion of your budget that you could direct and the rest doing random or semi-random things. [ Random from the choice of what you have available at current tech level or a little ahead, I mean. Randomly building something that's ages ahead in the tech tree should not be an option. ]

If you were to quantify everything done, the free market countries would always get slightly more because they have market effenciency.

That's very arguable, but that's another debate entirely.

 

[sangeli]

I think having a tax slider would work great. I forgot to mention that the tax slider should also incorporate hammer points. One thing that is true about the free market is that there is less corruption in the government because it is smaller, so the money is used better. The best part of the idea is that it is not a simple civic choice that is merely on/off, there are different degrees of controlling the economy and thus makes the game that much better. Plus, for people who hate micro-managing don't have to.

 

[rysmiel]

I think having a tax slider would work great. I forgot to mention that the tax slider should also incorporate hammer points. One thing that is true about the free market is that there is less corruption in the government because it is smaller, so the money is used better.

OTOH, a smaller government is easier to subvert, so it's just exchanging one form of corruption for another.

 

[buffalo6542]

The chance of a spy should depend on the size of a city. I mean people would notice a new person in town if the city is small, while a large city the spy could blend in. I also think a spy should perform a certain number of missions till they get caught. The percentage of the spy being caught would increase with each mission and you could withdraw the spy at any time.

This was also posted in some other threads but the spy should be able to assassinate the governor of a city or if in the Civ's capital, assassinate the Civ leader. This would cause the city to go in to X turns of revolt or the civilization in to anarchy for X turns.

 

[KaiserElectric]

I think there should be a seperate unit dedicated to counter-espionage. There would have to be a cap on the unit of course, but it could perform missions in your own cities such as protecting buildings, guarding water supplies, or increasing the chances of a spy being caught.

Spies should also be able to assassinate regular units such as soldiers and workers. The attack spy would be hidden from sight until it attacks a unit. Attacking would be like a battle between normal units. The spy would get a bonus on attacking the unit (element of surprise), but it won't be any good for defending. Regular units could also get a promotion that gives them bonus damage against an attacking spy (Scouting, 30% against spies, etc).

 

[endofthewor1d]

Spies should also be able to assassinate regular units such as soldiers and workers. The attack spy would be hidden from sight until it attacks a unit. Attacking would be like a battle between normal units. The spy would get a bonus on attacking the unit (element of surprise), but it won't be any good for defending. Regular units could also get a promotion that gives them bonus damage against an attacking spy (Scouting, 30% against spies, etc).

the problem with that is that a unit is representative of hundreds or even thousands of men. a spy is just one (or maybe a few) guy(s). that wouldn't be an assassination. that would be a rambo movie.

he could, however, assassinate great people, including a great general connected to a unit, thereby stripping said unit of whatever benefits it had enjoyed in the company of the general.

i've finally finished reading this thread all the way through. i'm going to comment on a lot of the ideas posted on it, and add some of my own. but not right now. life is encroacing on my civ game.

 

[endofthewor1d]

most of us like that religion is now a part of the civ world, but are unsatisfied in one way or another by how it's been implimented in civ4. personally, i think it's an excellent first step, and i'm looking forward to seeing it expanded upon in civ5.
the biggest obstacle to overcome is real world sensitivity toward the subject. so what we've got now is a few current day major players who are all the same. but how much better could it be to have each religion have its own unique flavor, granting different benefits or restrictions upon those civilizations that found it or have it as their state religion. some have already been suggested. someone earlier in the thread said something about jews having a bonus toward commerce and muslims having less war weariness or some such thing.

i think we all know that this can't happen. poor sid would be hated around the world for feeding stereotypes.

my solution...
have maybe 10 or 12 or however many religions in the game, each one unnamed but with a fixed requirement tech to be founded and with fixed benefits/restrictions. then the player could choose from a list of world religions what he wanted his to be called, or even just make one up.
congratulations! you're the first to discover monotheism. please choose a religion to found. you type in 'the church of the flying spaghetti monster', and you recieve a +1 commerce and production bonus, and a -1 science penalty in all of your cities with a temple to the flying spaghetti monster, just as you would have if you chose judaism or roman catholicism. or whatever.

that's an example i just pulled out of the blue. but the point is that the game could have different personalities for each religion founded without pissing anyone off.

i'd like to see something similar with leaders and civilizations. while i do like the trait system, i think it could be a little more customizeable without too big of an impact on the game.
for example... what if i want to be aggressive and financial, but i don't want to be a viking? i want to be james k. polk of the americans. why not? it's just a name and a picture. i could download the picture from the internet into my game. this would also satisfy the people who want hitler in the game. the game wouldn't have to include it, but as it stands, you can already choose your own name, so it stands to reason you should be able to choose a picture as well if you like. as for game balance regarding your choice of trait combinations, maybe the traits would have to be tweaked a bit for this to work. i don't know. i don't have time to write more just now. life is calling again.

 

[Scilly_guy]

I agree on the religion front, this topic is being pursued in the religion thread though so I shall leave it here. As for downloading civs/leaders off the net I think that is the best idea, have an integrated official site where people can upload their own leaders and civs to. That way modders can make their own, and have the firaxis team can add as many as they like too, then people can add whoever, whenever instead of requiring an add on. Obviously ship the game with the standard ones. You could add a maps section to the site too, and even a full mod section. I think if it was integrated into the game it would be much popular and easier for people who aren't familiar with faffing around with files to set a mod up. If it costs too much to run the server and the added implementation and the loss of add ons for new civs/leaders/etc (there would still be add ons for added gameplay which is the main reason people buy it). Just charge something for the downloads and give some credits with the game. This would encourage people to buy it instead of downloading illegal copies, you could give people who pre-order the game bonus credits and it would create a continuing source of income. But of course not charging is by far the best option.

 

[endofthewor1d]

here are some other things i'd like to see.

feats:
we've got one in civ4. you get a bonus for being the first to circumnavigate the globe (or rather, the cylindrical prism as the map now stands... i'll get to the map later). i'd like to see more of that sort of thing. the first to summit mount everest, the first to land on the moon, the first to reach the north pole, etc...
the moon landing may have to work more like a wonder, but the other two examples i just wrote would have to involve certain changes as to how terrain works in the game. down with impassible boundries, i say. the name of the game is civilization, after all. it's a celebration of the challenges mankind has faced and the obstacles we've overcome.

terrain changes:
1. ice/tundra: to be the first to the north pole, you can't just send some dolt scout north and race to the top. because ice and tundra become more and more dangerous to walk through as you get closer to the poles. your scout or explorer unit suffers damage and has to set up base camps or something to rest for a few turns with each tile movement forward, and then there's the chance of him just disappearing into the snow. i think the first civ to get a man to a pole and then safely back to one of his own cities should get some kind of bonus.

2. mountains: in civ4, mountains are impassable and unmineable. i don't like that at all. but i've got some ideas on how to make it work. mountains should be able to be mined, and should occaisionally have resources in them. that they don't now is just plain wrong. impassible i can forgive up to a point. people have already suggested taking damage for crossing mountains, having engineers build tunnels and roads through them later in the game. those are all great ideas and i think they should be considered for civ5. but in the early game, i'd also like to add that a mountain tile should be able to be entered by any unit, but that unit could only exit the mountain tile from the same direction that he entered it. this would allow units to take advantage of the defensive value of the terrain, but still not be able to pass through the mountain range. passing through would require a mountaineering promotion. but even units with this promotion would take some damage as they passed through the mountains.
and every map should have a unique tile as the highest peak in the world. this one truly is impassable for normal units, and acts in all ways the same as our civ4 mountains do, except perhaps that a city with this tile in its radius would earn some culture points for it. this brings me to my everest feat. we'd need either a highly promoted or trained explorer to enter the tile and push the special 'climb' button or whatever. this would start him on his mission that would take x amount of turns and have a chance of failure. the first civ to stand on the roof of the world should get some sort of bonus.

 

[endofthewor1d]

but i think the biggest gift sid meier could give me would be to have at least the option of a truly epic game. i'm talking about a ridiculously huge map with tiny hexoganal tiles and a truly round globe. a game that i could really have an investment in. i have to teach a class in five minutes, so i'm going to leave it at that. i'll expand on this later.