Civilization 5

[rogerdude]

Yes, we could call them regions but comparable in size to current squares.

 

[Fromage10x]

Something that has always bothered me about civ is the idea that government changes have such little effect on how you actually play the game.

Instead of simply giving stat bonuses, choosing how to have your people ruled should also change how you give orders; specifically what your cities are building (dictatorship type govs should be able to choose what their cities produce, others not so much so), what diplomatic options you have, and how you can use your troops.

Another thing that annoys me is the idea that the amount of food available is the only thing that can increase the size of a city...immigration is basically non-existent. I think it would be far more interesting to base population size not only on how much food you produce, but also how much culture your cities have.

 

[nzcamel]

see next post...

 

[nzcamel]

Something that has always bothered me about civ is the idea that government changes have such little effect on how you actually play the game.

Instead of simply giving stat bonuses, choosing how to have your people ruled should also change how you give orders; specifically what your cities are building (dictatorship type govs should be able to choose what their cities produce, others not so much so), what diplomatic options you have, and how you can use your troops.

In terms of accuracy you are correct in what you say. However civ is a 'god' type game. i.e. We play because we can do everything the way we want to! If you limited the power that the player has when they have a democratic form of government to match reality it would take away most of the fun; and almost the whole point of playing(as a democratic government.)
Players wouldn't ever change to democratic forms of government. (The logical extreme being that if you lost an election the computer would take over running your country for the next 3 - 5 years!) So I think civ is best to keep the differences in government working on a lower level.

However I like your immigration based on culture idea.

 

[toft]

Something that has always bothered me about civ is the idea that government changes have such little effect on how you actually play the game.

Instead of simply giving stat bonuses, choosing how to have your people ruled should also change how you give orders; specifically what your cities are building (dictatorship type govs should be able to choose what their cities produce, others not so much so), what diplomatic options you have, and how you can use your troops.

Another thing that annoys me is the idea that the amount of food available is the only thing that can increase the size of a city...immigration is basically non-existent. I think it would be far more interesting to base population size not only on how much food you produce, but also how much culture your cities have.

I agree with ya on the food part... sort of. Food from x-city shouldn't be limited to x-city. It would be cool if x-city, y-city were farm cities and they would transfer food to z-city. z-city could then focus more on cottages and/or mines instead of farms.

It would bring another tactical aspect into the game. Attack the farm-cities to weaken the larger enemy cities? Furthermore food should be trade-able from civ to civ, opening up another option: pure farm civs relying on trade income of their farming and pure metropolis civ relying on foreign food.

This would also make desert and tundra areas a little more viable.

 

[RedRalph]

As far as I'm conrned, each city population point should give an actual unit that can be put anywhere on the map, the city cross should be done away with altogether. If not in the early game, then at least by the iron age

 

[toft]

I hope that firaxis has learned a lot from civ3 and civ4 about game stability, and I wish that they dont use cutting edge graphics that doesnt allow half the civ community to play civ5.

Bottom line is that I would like a blend between civ3 scale of maps etc. and civ4 game mechanics (with less rainbow colours) for civ5.

At the time Civ4 vanilla arrived on the shelves, Firaxis had stated that computers no more than 2-3 years old could run the game without problems... that was far from the truth (you were playing a slideshow 1v1 on a tiny map).

FOCUS: Gameplay 100%! Dont let graphics dominate civ5!

 

[Vandal Warlord]

FOCUS: Gameplay 100%! Dont let graphics dominate civ5!

Please no! I love to see Graphics progress and get more advanced, what I would love to see the graphics used in Medieval II when fighting battles in Civ 5

 

[Kyuss]

Graphics doesn't much sense to me in THIS game. What I want is fun fun and more fun playing CIV. Conquering, managing my comerce, developing new tech's and so on.
Basically the main points are here but I want a overhaul: The resources could be tweaked a little, I don't like the "you have it or not" situation, if you start with rome and you have not iron...
I think the resources could be like in the real life, it's difficult not to have ANY resources or any quantity of a given resource. So I like to have quantities of Iron or oil... basically this allow to build units at a slower/faster pace OR to have a number limit.

 

[Fromage10x]

In terms of accuracy you are correct in what you say. However civ is a 'god' type game. i.e. We play because we can do everything the way we want to! If you limited the power that the player has when they have a democratic form of government to match reality it would take away most of the fun; and almost the whole point of playing(as a democratic government.)
Players wouldn't ever change to democratic forms of government. (The logical extreme being that if you lost an election the computer would take over running your country for the next 3 - 5 years!) So I think civ is best to keep the differences in government working on a lower level.

However I like your immigration based on culture idea.

Well, clearly I didn't mean you could lose control of your country. Obviously you are not simply the President of whatever Civ you are (despite what the Love the Leader days suggest, heh), you have more control than that by far...I just think that the way the production system works now is so far abstracted that it bothers me...especially when I, as the god of these people, am forced to be the one to build every single bloody one of their factories, or harbors, or what not. In actual practice it is very rarely that a government (even "communist" governments) will be that hands on with what a city produces--typically they limit themselves to infrastructure and government buildings such as courthouses.

Now, I'd be cool with Communist (or perhaps those that have chosen the communal property civic) civs choosing everything their people make, but otherwise it really should be limited.

In actual practice this would likely be a blessing AND a curse for the Democratic government. On the one hand, obviously, they would not have direct control over how their city develops...it's evolution would depend on it's location, resources in the area and perhaps a bit on the preferences of that civ...on the other hand you would be free to build government buildings in your cities while they also independently took care of economic, religious and scientific buildings.

Which reminds me, another thing I've wanted to see since civ 2...let me construct a building and train a troop at the same time; perhaps after a tech, like Specialization.

 

[[ERS]-Dominator]

I think combat w/ships should be improved i.e. ships being able to bombard any coastal tile, not just cities and they should also be able to shoot at units in cities, not just bombard the defenses.

 

[[ERS]-Dominator]

There could also be different civ start times and if a civ starts in another civs territory they could either get 1 of the older civs cities and become a vassal or be at war with the older one. And if the upstart decides to declare war, then some of the older civs units could rebel and join the new one.
You could also use this principle for any other war, so if 1 civ invades another and the invaded civ's people are really unhappy, then they could leave the city and become troops for the invader.

 

[Vandal Warlord]

Or you could play RFC.

 

[[ERS]-Dominator]

I know,but it would be nice to have dat with other scenarios and regular games. Besides, RFC doesn't have population from the unhappy cities of an invaded civ turning into troops for the attacker

 

[Healz]

I would like to see the option of at a certain technology being able to have mercenaries in an army. It would be cool to have mercenaries and very realistic, however there could be an increased danger of revolt.
It could also lead to certain events, such as:
Funds are running low what shall we do?
A. Fire the Mercenaries (Risk of Hostilities with Mercenaries)
B. Continue to pay the mercenaries at lower rate (Risk of Mercenaries unhappy)
C. Continue to pay mercenaries at same rate (Status Quo)
Chance behind these that mercenaries will become hostile anyway...

Of course mercenaries should be an option that could be turned off in the games menu if anyone doesn't want them in their game. Mercenaries can cover things such as privateers, mounted units, footsoldiers. In the later part of the game ie. Industrial to Modern Mercenaries are mainly footsoldier types unless there is a revolt when more advanced expensive units may become available on the black market. I would also like to see this screen as showing the Mercenaries you can buy with an up-down slider and then after you have bought them they appear in a city with a barracks and must be trained for one or two turns before they can be bought to battle...

 

[ryancammer]

no matter what minor tweaks are made to civ5, my biggest gripe still stands, IF they maintain the same combat system: that a war shouldn't take a thousand years to conduct, and pre-occupy the production capacity of your entire early civilization for the same period of time. the peloponnesian war lasted less than 30 years; all three punic wars were over in less than 80. so why is it that in civilization it sometimes takes me a millennium to raze my opponent's empire?

that's why, in my previous post, one of the improvement that i suggested was to put battles on a different timeline as the rest of the game, and cause armies to drain resources, rather than be the entire focus of a city's production.

also, regarding the comment about a customizable civilization being the equivalent of civilization 2, i think not; the point that i was making was, there should be some sort of logarithmic technological investigation scale, perhaps a government and civics one as well, that specializes a government in unique ways, but precludes the investigation of all technologies/civics/economics/etc., but imbues your civilization with strengths and disadvantages. this is NOT civ2. i think it's also an improvement over having pre-defined civilization strengths.

if anything, allow certain civilizations to investigate certain techs/governments/etc., so that the japanese and aztecs could never investigate, say, democracy, and the americans could never master zen buddhism. however, i really don't like this; japan is currently a democracy, and i think that the early techs you investigate should have more to do with your location and outlying resources.

still, i'd be happy to see the combat system fixed.

 

[1stcontact2035]

no matter what minor tweaks are made to civ5, my biggest gripe still stands, IF they maintain the same combat system: that a war shouldn't take a thousand years to conduct

This may sound a bit undoable, but could there be two separate time spans or something, one being a macromanaging turn scale, and one a micromanaging scale that only comes into play when, for instance, a war breaks out and smaller turn increments are needed. Of course, it wouldn't be that simple. But, for instance, you could have the "macro" turns click away with 50 year increments, and then a crisis comes along, and you go to something like a micromanaging mode, or some mode which allows you to manage the crisis (perhaps you can prepare for way in macro mode, but fight the war in micro mode). Both modes would be loosely independent of each other, meaning that one mode works based on the actions of the other, but that all actions in the mode are self-contained. For instance, one builds units normally in macro-mode, only at a more accelerated rate than the micro mode, and the units can be moved in macro-mode the same. Units can even fight battles in macro mode, that is to say, small scale frontier battles without war being fought. But, once a conflict erupts, or some other crisis is at hand (perhaps diplomatic), then micro-mode will automatically kick in, allowing those players involved in the crisis, either directly or indirectly, to manage the crisis in a reasonable time frame. This also allows for longer playing, as these crisis would probably take a good deal of playtime.

1stcontact2035

 

[ryancammer]

two posts ago, i wrote that there should be one timescale, with a very small unit of time (say, a month). if you want to play one month at a time, fine; however, the game will progress so slowly in the beginning that it'll be clear that there's simply no point to it, unless, as you pointed out, there's a war. so, you adjust the time slider to progress at a rate of, say, 100 years, in the beginning. later, of course, you might do well to micromanage, though i believe that cities should probably build themselves. in fact, the civics should to a large extent dictate what cities build, and how they build themselves. but as far as time is concerned, let people choose their own time scale, but have good recommendations for the epoch.

 

[Healz]

I like the current timescales. This is already in, in a way as one of the options for setting up a custom game in Beyond The Sword. I really think more emphasis needs to be put on making Civilization IV easier to mod with an editor built in that can be used to make basic changes like adding units without needing to worry too much about writing out the whole of the xml yourself... I would also like to see a little bit more fleshing out of the game in certain eras like the idea of mercenaries, whether locally generated mercenaries or bought in from elsewhere. For example, Roman Cavalry was brought in from elsewhere... The Swiss Guard were a mercenary outfit that hired themselves out and were employed by the Pope where they live on as a private defence force...

 

[[ERS]-Dominator]

Or you could play RFC.

Nice merc realism idea though

But it would be awesome to have that in other scenarios and normal games too, especially the


part where you can turn your own units into mercs and make money from other civs for them.