Civilization VII Wishlist

[Askia Muhammad]

I would like to bring back the late game Freedom/Autocracy/Order geopolitical thing from Civ 5. Lategame in Civ 6 is too easy because you can just about be friends with everyone on a standard size map. I find it makes the game too boring....add a little danger.

Or you can be a complete ass and none of the AI who hate your guts will be able to attack you anyway - even if three of them team up.

I really think the military AI needs to be one of the priorities. The watered down version we got made Civ 6 feel more like a Cities: Skylines launch than a geopolitical/historical 4x at times

 

[OzzyKP]

I know I'm in the minority, but I hope Civ7 gets rid of districts.

 

[GrayingGamer]

If Firaxis wants to truly improve the game, and not just cash in on the next sequel in the franchise, they need to focus on two things:

1. By far the most important thing is to make each age/era interesting. The early game is good - it's chock full of exploration, choices, planning, etc. It's a downhill slide from there, though, almost always leading to a 'meh' late game that is mostly an efficiency slog. The only challenge here is managing to see it through to completion. Late game should culminate in 20th century style world wars centered around ideology and world dominance, wars that are only won by effective use of combined arms warfare. The tools are there, I just hardly ever have to use them (unless I'm steamrolling an incompetent opponent in a domination run that I haven't managed to win yet for some reason). Late game should be the most exciting part of the game (what a thought!). I'm not saying every game has to exactly re-enact WWII, but that should be the general gravitational pull, instead of the yawn that currently occurs.

2. An AI that can play the game well, in a varied and interesting fashion, and be more than just a speed bump on the player's road to eventual victory. Challenge that is based on more than just stacking numerical bonuses for a mediocre AI. This would be a philosophical shift for the game, and so I realize this probably won't happen... but many players nowadays are far more interested in high stakes, rogue/rogue-lite type games, and I for one am ready to play a Civ game where my opponents can actually win, and not just potentially slow down or frustrate my plans.

I really feel that if Civ 7 is just "Civ 6 with more stuff," it'll be the first real failure of the franchise. Civ 6 has hit the limit for me on complexity and bloat - I want a leaner game that is more interesting because of the gameplay, not the mechanics.

 

[blackbutterfly]

I know I'm in the minority, but I hope Civ7 gets rid of districts.

Perhaps scale back districts?

Some are absolutely vital. E.g: Canal.
I count this as one of the few examples of where Civ VI improves on Civ V. Because with canals you can traverse bodies of water on those real earth maps, etc.
Also the Harbour, which allows near coastal cities to build ships. (Previously you had to build a coastal city to do that).

But o/w I think you're right. Very few cities have been planned like Washington D.C.
Most like London, Paris, Sydney, etc. are pretty haphazard. Very rarely do you find cities with industrial zones or theatre squares IRL. Universities and research labs are frequently associated. (I mean how may tech firms spun out of MIT, Stanford, etc.?)

(I think power plants should be a district. E.g. Nuclear plants. They tend to be huge).

---

My wish:

Card combat system (inspired by Marvel's Midnight Suns).

I played MMS on a free-to-play weekend on Steam and absolutely fell in love!
Just because 2K+Firaxis did a piss poor job of communicating this superbly nuanced game to gamers, I think it was widely rejected as a "card game" (which it absolutely is not. I mean Civ VI has cards for polices. That doesn't make it a card game).

But I suspect Card Combat for Civ VII is going to be hugely divisive, so I suggest 2K+Firaxis introduce it in a Civ spinoff:

Beyond Earth 2

 

[pokiehl]

Some are absolutely vital. E.g: Canal.

Canals are like the most useless infrastructure in the game. They’re a meme. And even if they weren’t, why do they need to be districts? They could easily be improvements.

 

[blackbutterfly]

Canals are like the most useless infrastructure in the game. They’re a meme. And even if they weren’t, why do they need to be districts? They could easily be improvements.

Not possible in Civ V:

 

[Prester John 2]

I almost never use canals, maybe except to improve a industrial district in a coastal city. I have a separate fleet in every major sea my civ is adjacent to. Apart from that ocean travel is fast enough for my ships to sail around most peninsulas.

What I like about the district system is 1) it makes the map look more diverse 2) you actually interact with the map more instead of enacting the same same building order in every city. Until the late game (industrial) where it becomes too repetitive and the marginal benefit of a new district negligible.

 

[civac]

Canals are very important in Civ4 MP (using forts and cities). Being able to transfer your fleet into a different body of water is a huge deal. But yes, as the example shows they can easily be tile improvements.

 

[blackbutterfly]

But yes, as the example shows they can easily be tile improvements.

In many ways the difference between improvement and district is superficial in Civ VI.
HUMANKIND does away with this as there are only districts.

Yeah, so perhaps choosing one over the other is the way to go?

Lime's Bridges mod is another great example for the other instance of bridging landmasses (which you can sort of do with a Harbour).

Anyway, district/improvement = tomatoes/tomatoes

Trivial.

I'm really hoping for Card Combat in Civ VII

 

[aieeegrunt]

I feel the same way, it does feel like an artificial distinction for sure

 

[Hull tyyp]

I would like to make a suggestion that the game should have some changes when playing at different game speeds.

I like to play standard speed but sometimes also epic and marathon, likewise when I play with friends then I sometimes play quick or online speed.

When playing fast speeds the trebuchet unit feels so meaningless, you can mostly skip them so they feel like a useless addition to the game. At the same time on marathon speed it feels awesome when you get trebuchets, you really feel like you now have a technological advantage in warfare now.

Civ 7 should have more distinction between game speeds. Slower speeds could add more techs to the tech tree in addition to making research slower.

 

[_hero_]

Not possible in Civ V:

This is on a North America map. Worthwhile canals on actual randomly generated maps are extremely rare.

 

[Askia Muhammad]

I think the city building aspects are fleshed out plenty and accounted for about 85% of the game in Civ 6. I’d like to see all of the work put into diplomacy, military AI improvements, and something else like a policy Esq system that isn’t based on cards. I don’t think the city building needs much refinement as sometimes Civ 6 began to feel like a pacifists dream and more of a SimCity game than an empire/4x game

 

[UWHabs]

I think the city building aspects are fleshed out plenty and accounted for about 85% of the game in Civ 6. I’d like to see all of the work put into diplomacy, military AI improvements, and something else like a policy Esq system that isn’t based on cards. I don’t think the city building needs much refinement as sometimes Civ 6 began to feel like a pacifists dream and more of a SimCity game than an empire/4x game

Yeah, it's pretty fun as a city-builder with basically some side quests for expanding. As much as districts aren't 100% accurate, gameplay-wise it's a fun optimization problem building a big adjacency. I think you could get some small refinements there, or even just more civs with unique rules, and it would be fine.

I don't think the diplomacy is necessarily terrible, either. At least, at times, you can actually keep and maintain friendships. Or if you're a warmonger, you don't, but that's a good penalty.

But there is still not enough penalty to war (negative happiness due to war just seems completely useless, and after the classical era unit costs just don't factor in enough to cause problems), and yeah, the AI definitely could use some tuning up. Along with a few other changes (I'd like to see a little more push and pull with city-state suzerains, too often you can just lock up a city and never worry about it again and get massive rewards), getting a system where the AI can challenge you (other than those early game rushes due to their massive numbers of free units and cities), should be the priority.

 

[civac]

There is no need or reason for a penalty on warfare. Civ6 warfare is painful enough as is. Just give the AI enough bonuses and wits to be able to fight. Then interlocking city/encampment defences and the way military buildup competes with development of the nation makes attacking costly and dangerous for the player. For example, the AI seems to have issues maintaining an army. It would be a small change to have it pay 10% of normal army maintenance on deity or even remove unit maintenance entirely. Reduce upgrade costs further and adjust some knobs to have AI build more military. Only tactical AI requires some actual work for the programmer. Easiest way to get that fixed is to outsource it to the community by publishing that part of the source code. Bit cynical but works.

 

[Aurelesk]

The AI do not seem to struggle to generate Gold. You can always trade anything to then. You can solely build an economy on Pillage and the trade of Luxury / Strategy, completely ignore Trade Route and Commercial Hub, and still have plenty Gold to enjoy.

A pillaged tile is basically a death sentence, because the AI used to not repair it. Even now, it doesn't go for it as soon as it should be.

You can see the AI stockpile an obscene amount of Gold, yet being lackluster in district and building. You become aware of this when using Rock Bands as they can perform on Campus only if it has an University. Since tier2 building are not usually buildt nor bought, the player will eventually catch up because the AI just don't know how to improve its lands, plan its district, and put building inside.

The rare time the AI bankrupts, it is due to unit Maintenance (we are talking 500 GPT in maintenance), because it trains Military units at nauseam, yet don't use them, don't declare war, and still see military training as the best choice instead of Builders or putting a district down. You can see it when you purposely bankrupt an AI with Diplomatic Flavors: 2000+ unit strength suddenly becomes 0 (or near 0), and the AI went from 0 GPT to 500 GPT the next turn.

I will not blame the maintenance, but that the AI couldn't stop itself doing anything else than training unit for no reason. Sometimes, they are going crazy about Projects.

 

[Jeppetto]

Ad Improvement vs District: District kills the yields of where it is placed, Improvement usually adds onto them. I would actually work more with this, make Districts more creatively about what it is adjacent to, Improvements what it is on. Lumbermill getting Production per adjacent Forest sounds more planning-inspiring to me than Place me on whichever Forest Plain remains. But this does change based on whether we want more importance in single tile and city having less tiles or more expansive cities where each tile is only minor unit.

 

[Mahi]

-> 100% mod support for multiplayer games
-> more interesting AI in combat and diplomacy
-> and perhaps a way to obstruct steam rolling scenarioes. ie. defeating an opponent's initial units = freebee cities

 

[pokiehl]

-> 100% mod support for multiplayer games

We currently have that in Civ 6, thankfully. Huge improvement over Civ 5 in that regard. I hope mod support for MP is at least as robust and userfriendly as we have in Civ 6.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

-> 100% mod support for multiplayer games
-> more interesting AI in combat and diplomacy
-> and perhaps a way to obstruct steam rolling scenarioes. ie. defeating an opponent's initial units = freebee citie

Help and/or support for the modes system for modders. That's assuming modes come back.

I think if the were a game option to play "Raze City" only until say 2nd tier government it would slow down steam rolling.