Civilization 5

[Öjevind Lång]

I'd really like to see the High Council and the throne room from Civ II return. I can't think they would take much memory, or demand too much many and resources to include, so those of you who always oppose the idea on those grounds can save your breath.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Once you moved to A, supplies through Y would be cut - but yes, you might get them in from some other vector. It's not a perfect representation of the effect, its a simplification for game purposes.

Yes, you would get them in from other vector. I remember in Civ2 how i was frustrated to not be able to go in some squares just because of a unit or city. That was problematic when the city aimed was behind a river. You couldn't go directly past the river, you had to bypass the city in order to do so. Sure ZOCs can lead to interesting skirmishes, but I had some interesting skirmishes with Civ3 in multiplayer too. And in Civ4 also. For me, ZOCs have too much side effects than it bring strategy. At a point it becomes just silly to not be able to go there because of this unit. Why can't I go there? This is stupid! Civ4 is satisfying enuogh from this point of view.

A very easy way to do this would be to go back to the civ2 format, which allowed you to use enemy roads but also featured ZOCs for a blocking effect. Having simple free movement anywhere you want is too unbalancing and certainly doesn't resemble real world patterns - even the fastest advances in modern times (say, the blitzkrieg against France, or the invasion of Iraq) averaged only 20-30 miles per day. In friendly territories, forces can be redeployed 100s of miles in a single day (once they're on the move, which can take a while) without even using airlifts.

Not sure about the avaibility of this combo. I prefer to switch the nowaday culture for a management of the tiles a la Civ2. You want this Corn from the other side of the frontier? Fine, declare war, put a strong unit on the Corn, go into the city panel and put a worker on the Corn, and sign the peace treaty. (if the other player/AI is ok with that)

About the weak advancement of the troops in reality, i don't think civ4 is representing this well. Indeed, troops are incredibly slow in enemy territory. It makes conquests incredibly long. I wouldn't mind if we could use the enemy roads. Maybe just roads, and not train. It would be a pain to move all an army with trains anyway, and not strategic at all. I agree to be able to move enemy roads but not railroads. After all, the reco is supposed to make this possible.

 

[flyingchicken]

I'd really like to see the High Council and the throne room from Civ II return. I can't think they would take much memory, or demand too much many and resources to include, so those of you who always oppose the idea on those grounds can save your breath.

O RLY?

What if the developers render them in super-high-quality <fancy term fancy term> 3D with <mumbo jumbo video jargon meaning pure visual awesome> WITHOUT turning them into movie-type files first? WHAT NOT MUCH RESOURCES OR MEMORY THEN, HUH?

Going by the directions games, even simple strategy games, are going with their graphics (EUIII anyone? Okay, I'm just bitter that my graphics card couldn't render the damn land, but still, point!), my concern is not silly.

 

[toft]

O RLY?

What if the developers render them in super-high-quality <fancy term fancy term> 3D with <mumbo jumbo video jargon meaning pure visual awesome> WITHOUT turning them into movie-type files first? WHAT NOT MUCH RESOURCES OR MEMORY THEN, HUH?

Going by the directions games, even simple strategy games, are going with their graphics (EUIII anyone? Okay, I'm just bitter that my graphics card couldn't render the damn land, but still, point!), my concern is not silly.

it is imo... silly...

 

[frekk]

I remember in Civ2 how i was frustrated to not be able to go in some squares just because of a unit or city. That was problematic when the city aimed was behind a river. You couldn't go directly past the river, you had to bypass the city in order to do so.

You didn't have to ... you always have the option of defeating the units and taking control of the area.

For me, ZOCs have too much side effects than it bring strategy. At a point it becomes just silly to not be able to go there because of this unit. Why can't I go there? This is stupid! Civ4 is satisfying enuogh from this point of view.

Those "side effects" as you call them, are the real limitations of strategic maneuvering. There's a reason practically every Avalon Hill title in the chits-and-hexes style used them.

 

[Onionsoilder]

I'd like to see the upgradable palace reintroduced.

 

[Naokaukodem]

You didn't have to ... you always have the option of defeating the units and taking control of the area.

Oh yeah, you defeat the city to bypass the river in order to... defeat the city... ?

 

[UWHabs]

I feel road sprawl pretty realistic. The only thing i find not realistic is the fact that we can't use enemy roads at some extense. this goes with the culture complaint where culture is a nasty thing. I would like to see culture totally removed from Civ5, the way it is treated in Civ3 and Civ4 that is. Culture should still exist, but in a way more subtil way. Culture should be able to expand through ennemy territory, and remain on conquered lands at a favor of some factor. Eastern Roman Empire was greek culturally. china part of mongol empire was chinese, and never converted to the mongol culture (was too strong). Chinese people rebelled and made the chinese mongolian empire to fall. I think this way to treat culture would bring a lot to the game but please, do not make it determinant anymore for the design of our frontiers.

The best way to get rid of road sprawl would be to have maintenance costs per road. Make it so that a "road" in the game is more like a highway in real life. Maybe each road gives the city +0.25 unhealthiness? Each one costs 1/10 of a coin per turn to maintain? Something to make it so that you only have the bare minimum of roads to connect your towns.

Now, since workers won't be building as many roads, maybe you'd change it so that in order to keep any improvement, every 50 turns, you need to waste 2 worker-turns to "maintain tile". So, you need to waste one worker per city or 2 to maintain your tiles otherwise you lose the farms that you built (or maybe have a higher chance of losing the tile). And obviously since this would be too much micromanagement, we could have the first useful auto-worker function - automatically maintain tiles, which just goes around and makes sure all the tiles in your empire are properly maintained.

As for the cultural borders, I guess the reason it fluctuates now is that basically when a tile flips in culture, it's basically like the people there holding a referendum to secede and join the opposing country. It'd probably be more interesting if you didn't have individual tiles flip, but maybe instead have regions. So one tile alone won't flip, but you'll have a block of 3-4 tiles all at some point go flashing between the colours of the 2 rival civs. Those tiles would then go into a "rebellion", at which point the governments would come together and you'd either have each side come to a compromise. Maybe it would turn into a DMZ, where neither side can send troops (and later on you get some magical "UN Peacekeepers" who would station themselves on the squares), or you can decide to go into a "limited battle", where you're still at peace, get negative modifiers, but would be at war on those tiles.

Or maybe even have a case where you have a whole city, instead of culturally flipping to the other civ, it would decide to revolt into its own country. Give them a handful of drafted units, have them each have a "nationalism" promotion, which would be like +25 combat odds in your own territory, and -25% otherwise.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Or maybe even have a case where you have a whole city, instead of culturally flipping to the other civ, it would decide to revolt into its own country. Give them a handful of drafted units, have them each have a "nationalism" promotion, which would be like +25 combat odds in your own territory, and -25% otherwise.

I would prefer this kind of things yes. All things for more rebellions are good things. My wish for Civ5 is to have plenty rebellions and civs changes like in the reality.

 

[SteveWiz]

I would like to see more late game technological advances --- ability to build bridges that go from a continent to one of the islands off its' coast or tunnels that do the same thing (similar to the Chunnel) or even possibly to a nearby continent.

 

[ryancammer]

i still think that there should be many divergent paths you can take for your technological development. you also shouldn't be able to gain all technological advances. perhaps also you should be able to research multiple technologies simultaneously, under different paths.

for example:

i'm the americans, considered an industrious civilization. there's technology tracks, one of which is an industry-based technology track. when i research, say, the corporation, i get a bonus that allows me to develop it faster than, say, the aztecs.

however, the aztecs get a bonus when investigating tactics. either way, we'll both get the corporation and tactics, but the aztecs will get tactics faster.

now, we should both get to investigate different technology tracks simultaneously. there would be something like military, spiritual, industry, and perhaps political?

but then there should be all sorts of sub-specialties, that are increasingly difficult to investigate. if i'm the aztecs and i've investigated tactics, a sub-specialty could be leadership, and an child technology of leadership could be battlefield discipline. another sub-specialty of tactics could be battlefield medicine, and a child of that, quick evacuation.

the benefits of these sub-specialties could be that a general gets generated for your troops if you have leadership, and battlefield discipline yields a bonus during combat.

for the corporation, the sub-specialties could be, the free market, which would give you a percentage of the trade of all other civilizations. then, a child specialty of that could be the stock market, which would provide a significant gold bonus in cities that build a stock market.

what should NOT happen is, an industrial nation gets all the perks and benefits of the military technologies, and vice versa. if you're aztec, you should rightfully have a military advantage over an industrious nation. and, as an industrious nation, you should have an overwhelming economic advantage over a military one.

case in point: during world war 2, the nazis had a huge technological advantage over every other country in the world, with better equipment, and more disciplined troops. however, they were crushed by the production capacity of the americans.

these are the types of fights that should happen in civilization. if you're the germans, you should get panzer tanks, me-262's, and v-2 rockets, to rain down on your enemies. if you're the americans, and end up in a pissing contest, you should get standard jets and tanks, but should be able to out-produce your enemies.

finally, if you completely conquer your enemy, whether it be through military, diplomatic, and cultural means, you should get all of their technologies. it's a pretty good incentive to conquer your opponents

 

[ryancammer]

wars should have a variety of endings. your enemy should be able to cede some of their territory, perhaps some of their technology, and some of their gold. additionally, you should be able to carve up their territory amongst other civilizations that you're allied with, and share their technologies.

 

[KaiserElectric]

welcome to civfanatics!

anyway, I have some new ideas about the espionage system that I wish to share. I feel that you should be able to assign spies to enemy cities like normal specialists, and those spies give you towards that particular civ. These spies can be captured if another civ captures the city or as the result of a random event. Civs can also build counter-espionage units that can search cities for enemy spies. There should also be a special coordinator unit that functions like the normal spy and can perform missions.

 

[knugen]

Bring Civ2 back. 90% of what they did away with from that version, they should have kept.

"No paratroopers in modern combat"... WTH kind of "realistic" game rules are those?

I agree 100%.
Civ 2 had better Music, advisors, some diplmomacy (giving units etc), much better wonder movies, scenario creating was much better in Civ 2. Throne room though is kinda pointless?

1 thing I'd like to see is a real 3D planet where you can move all directions and less cartoony graphics. Perhaps SMAC's height levels aswell. Also culture is a stupid border definition source. I'd like to see borders defined first by military strenght (you own the land you have units, cities and work) and conquest and later defined diplomatic with ability to trade and demand, annex squares/hexagons. You should also be able to learn technology from neighbours, you should not be able to be a stone age civ next to an industrial.
Severe penalties for razing cities, it's ridicoulus how genocidal the AI is now.
Add Israeli civ. Also how about ability to choose civs from different eras, like England - UK, Rome - Italy, Byzantine - Ottoman etc.

Religion I'm not so sure about, I think it has way too much power right now, also it's too simplified. There should be a starting religion like "native religion", but then more organized religions. Also they could splinter into different factions. Influence of religions in a civ should vary, like when switching state religion the old one should diminish, depending on religious civic. also perhaps unhappiness + ability to purge infidels!

here's another idea, how about paying gold to upgrade tiles with animals and plants? Could be wiped out by pillaging etc. + Bring back terraforming options, replanting forrests etc

Mountains should not be a waste of space. Workable (very expensive) and passable (very slow)

Canals for one tile landtiles.

lastly, ability to transfer food from food rich areas to poorer, or even trade food. In fact instead make all tiles in a civ workable with access to cities by roads.

 

[rysmiel]

I would like to see more late game technological advances --- ability to build bridges that go from a continent to one of the islands off its' coast or tunnels that do the same thing (similar to the Chunnel) or even possibly to a nearby continent.

Agreed entirely.

 

[rysmiel]

i still think that there should be many divergent paths you can take for your technological development. you also shouldn't be able to gain all technological advances. perhaps also you should be able to research multiple technologies simultaneously, under different paths.

I strongly and strenuously disagree.

i'm the americans, considered an industrious civilization. there's technology tracks, one of which is an industry-based technology track. when i research, say, the corporation, i get a bonus that allows me to develop it faster than, say, the aztecs.
however, the aztecs get a bonus when investigating tactics. either way, we'll both get the corporation and tactics, but the aztecs will get tactics faster.

Ick. That's yet another thing that messes with your strategic priorities and flexibility before you actually start the game and see what makes sense in the context of that particular game.

what should NOT happen is, an industrial nation gets all the perks and benefits of the military technologies, and vice versa. if you're aztec, you should rightfully have a military advantage over an industrious nation. and, as an industrious nation, you should have an overwhelming economic advantage over a military one.
(...)
these are the types of fights that should happen in civilization. if you're the germans, you should get panzer tanks, me-262's, and v-2 rockets, to rain down on your enemies. if you're the americans, and end up in a pissing contest, you should get standard jets and tanks, but should be able to out-produce your enemies.

So the Aztecs have to behave like real-world Aztecs, whether it makes sense in the game or not, and the same for every other Civ ? No way. That's playing Civ in a straitjacket.

 

[Healz]

I agree that there should be a better way of doing the leader script. There should be a choice of scripts. I think it would be good having a drop-down box where each leader has a set of options based on something like economic, militaristic, isolationist, etc. and you can choose the script if you choose a box with custom scripts. Allowing this option then means that depending on how the AI is scripted for a leader, custom scripts can be done for further leaders. These scripts should control how the leader reacts to different situations. IE. Churchill as leader should give a defensive bonus to all defending units due to his skill at boosting the morale of the British people in 1940 during the darkest hours of the battle of Britain.

As another example, Hitler should give a bonus for military production at the expense of economic and research to simulate his effects on the German people as militaristic. This is just a half fleshed out concept that could work. Each leader has their own quirks that could be used in Civ V to create a very emersive game. Also there should be the idea of leaders having vices which need to be managed or overcome, such as Neopolean might be an idealistic individual that believes in his right to rule and have an empire. This is just a thought based on a mod I saw here called Saints and Sinners which introduced historical flaws to leaders. Just a thought that there could be a tick-box that allowed you to play with flawed human leaders...

 

[KaiserElectric]

I like the idea of flawed leaders, but isn't there already a mod that gives the leaders negative traits?

 

[battleaxe]

case in point: during world war 2, the nazis had a huge technological advantage over every other country in the world, with better equipment, and more disciplined troops. however, they were crushed by the production capacity of the americans.

these are the types of fights that should happen in civilization. if you're the germans, you should get panzer tanks, me-262's, and v-2 rockets, to rain down on your enemies. if you're the americans, and end up in a pissing contest, you should get standard jets and tanks, but should be able to out-produce your enemies.

I don't agree that the Americans out-produced the Germans due to any knowledge, trait or advance in WW2. Simply, America's main land mass wasn't under direct assult, so their factories weren't being bombed and their supply lines for the required resources weren't as hindered. The Germans main production limitation came about from running short of raw materials (their supply was cut off).

EDIT: To clarify, therefore while I'm happy to have a civ trait (industrious) that provides a small production bonus over others, that bonus should be a multiplier of whatever the civ in question is producing so that good civ management is still required to get the benefit of that trait. A well managed non-industrial civ should be able to out produce a poorly managed industrial civ.

 

[battleaxe]

lastly, ability to transfer food from food rich areas to poorer, or even trade food. In fact instead make all tiles in a civ workable with access to cities by roads.

Yep, I agree with this - see my related post: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=5447932&postcount=143

The best way to get rid of road sprawl would be to have maintenance costs per road.

Laying a road on a tile gives a commerce bonus when that tile is worked. So this maintenance cost would offset that?

Another way is to change how 'build road' orders are given. It could be changed to select worker(s), click 'build road' and then select 2 cities between which the road is built. After the second city is selected the tiles where the road is to be layed should be highlighted to ensure the user can refine the route if need be. These roads could be 'highways'. I'd then make mining and irrigating orders automatically lay down a road to connect that improved tile to the highways. Improved tiles should then give the movement bonus provided nowadays with a road. Trade routes should then be calcuated based on highways only. I think this would speed up trade route calculation as there is a network of city connections to evaluate rather than iterating over each tile on the map.

There's been many suggestions related to the map's natural resources. I think once you connect to a tile with a natural resource that resource should be added to a 'bucket' of resources for your empire. You could then trade that resource as per now, or you could keep it. However keeping it should not give any advantage until you build a city improvement in one of your cities to make use of it anywhere in your empire. E.g. I've connected to uranium. Now I need to build a uranium enrichment facility in the city containing the natural resource in its radius to get the enriched uranium. Once I have that facility I get 'enriched uranium' in my resource bucket and I can then build units that require enriched uranium (i.e. nuclear missiles!).

I think delegating workers to tasks is a boring aspect of the game and I don't think they're necessary for developing mines/irrigation/roads within a city radius (Note, still need them for my 'highways' idea above). Instead a city would auto-develop tiles in its radius as the population expands onto the tiles.