Devil's Advocate: is this the end of creativity in Civ?

[dh_epic]

A new resource system isn't out of the question. According to the BTS info center, Aluminum Inc. produces Aluminum. Standard Ethanol produces Oil. These convert existing resources into existing resources. But that seems like a pretty limited concept unless you add tons of new resources like "Cars" or "Jewelry". And I disagree that Firaxis is willing to add 30 new resources to the existing 40 resources in the game.

And there's something to that limit, too. There's a sweet spot for the amount of learning required in a game. Too simple and it will bore most people. Too many things to learn and it will scare most people. This will piss people like us off ... but Firaxis clearly believes Civ is risking too much complexity, rather than too much simplicity. That's why we likely won't see many new resources in Civ 5.

That's not to say we won't see resource processing in Civ 5. But if we do, it will be because someone had the creativity to pull it off within a 30-40 resource limit.

 

[Commander Bello]

@ dh_epic:

With all due respect, and admittedly before having read the whole thread (only your first and second posting), I cannot agree with you.

Honestly, by reading these postings, I immediately got the impression that you personnally are quite satisfied with Civ4 (which of course cannot and shall not be discussed) but by that are blocking yourself for being open to new ideas.

I for my side think that almost any single component of Civ4 can (and some of them should) be improved for the better. I am convinced that the total of these changes would make for a better game - and a new one, too.

I will try to indicate some ideas in the next postings, although I may have to leave for a new project, so please take this just as an announcement which may take some time to become realized.

 

[dh_epic]

Commander Bello... to poke in, I would say Civ 4 satisfied me much more than Civ 3. Is it a perfect game? No. But a lot of my complaints would be resolved in small and mod-able ways, like removing collateral damage, or boosting Nationalism. That's not enough to get me excited about an expansion pack, let alone a sequal. I do have major criticisms of Civilization 4. But they tend to imply the need for major solutions that I think Firaxis is skeptical about.

As for everyone else's complaints, I often see fanboys who complain the game should take twice as long with twice as many units (not gonna happen), and critics who either want Civ 2 back (also not gonna happen) or complain about realism (which is never enough -- you have to find a way to fix realism that also results in better game play).

I think the quote in your signature is very telling. I agree. The entire "Big Vision" document started from me and a few friends pointing out things that made Civ 3 a bad game. I think criticizing the current game play is a much better starting point than "it would be cooler if..." or "it would be more realistic if..."

 

[Commander Bello]

[...]

1) More of the Same: New units, leaders, wonders, civics, more UUs, techs... Nothing really interesting here. These are really just graphics that front for a few mathematical values. Not that these are bad, but you can't make a good sequel off of "more of the same".[...]

I am not a fan of "more of the same", either.
Nevertheless, the first thing coming to mind would be the limitation of 19 (including the Barbarians) nations (I prefer to speak of nations instead of civilizations). Why not allowing the player to customize the game in the advanced settings for as many nations as his computer may handle? If they learn that 67 nations are just too much, they will reduce it to a more handable quantity, anyway.
Why not allowing for an unlimited number of religions (under the assumption that these religions would be handled in one xml file)?
Same question of course for the civics.
(thinking of it, I have to admit that I cannot prove a hard-coded limitation of those numbers)

Thinking about the combat system, I am missing a special attack promotion as a counter for any special defense promotion. This should be possible by xml-coding, of course.
There is already the city defense - city attack, and I am playing a mod in which you have hill defense - hill attack (don't know if this is 'vanilla' or not, as it is more than one year since I have played an out-of-the box- game).
But where is the wood defense - wood attack combination?

(for readibility, I have chosen to comment your points one by one)

 

[Commander Bello]

[...]
2) The return of Civ past. Aside from begging for Civ 5 to be 2D... there's lots of suggestions to return to old systems that were inherently broken. Zone-of-control, caravans, damage-without-risk catapults, resources-without-cost colonies, suicide galleys, blind-greed diplomacy, rich-get-richer rewards for winning wars. Besides the fact that these all led to huge exploits, these features are unfortunately OLD. Where's the creativity?[...]

Of course, old systems which are broken shall not be re-implemented.

Does that mean that you cannot improve them and then re-implement?

The zone of control for instance is something very natural and easily understandable to the player.
I will agree that it could lead to your units being manouvred into a dead-end and therefore is needing improvement.

Forts as one example would qualify immediately to have a ZoC. In such a ZoC, an enemy unit might move in, but would lose any additional movemenent points after the first one.
Even units could issue such a ZoC, if the were near other units of the same or allied players.

--Z--...Z = ZoC
-UZU-..U = allied units
--Z--...- = terrain

Speaking about forts I think that most players would agree to the statement that they are almost meaningless, if unmodded (once again, this may have changed with WL, as I have never played it without my favourite modification).

Caravans and trading lines could be established by moving the first caravan or trading ship from city A to city B, thus creating a visible trade route on the map, at which later a unit would automatically move back and forth. The frequency of this automatic movement could be determined by the wealth/production of the two connected cities. This way, two very good developed cities would be connected by a heavily populated trade route - which in turn would be a very profitable target for enemy interception. Between two less developed cities, such an opportunity would be more rare.
(Trading lines seem to be included in BtS, as far as naval movements are concerned)

Artillery (which you call damage-without-risk-catapults): One of the weakest (if not the weakest) changes from previous versions to Civ4. Completely unintuitive and plainly a misconception, if you ask me.
Of course, in Civ3 the AI did not understand to make use of artillery. Nevertheless, this was not a flaw of the last concept, but a flaw of the programming (and the Civ4-AI does not understand the new concept much better, btw).
I cannot believe that it would be possible to create an AI which would be able to check about the opposing stack or army and to use its available artillery units in a "human" way. How to use these artillery units of course would be dependant of how the combat system will be set up in a new Civ.
To this, I think, I will refer in a later posting.

At the end of the day, I am not against to re-invent old ideas, only just because they would have been around earlier. Why not? If you can make them fun, just do it.

[edit] In addition, I would like to propose to have a look to similar games of the past, like Colonization, Call to Power 1 & 2, Panzer General and others and to copy some of the principles laid down there.
Sure, "old" concepts. Yet, sometimes better ones than what we find in Civ4. Even more, if combined.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

Alright, let's see if we can find some ideas that won't require us to rework the entire game.

A lot of these ideas are necessarily small. I'm not saying I disagree with them. But you're not going to sell a game off of one new civic or diplomacy option. "Improved civics!!!" isn't exactly thrilling if all you've done is added one or two new options. The issue here is there's a lack of *big* ideas, that transcend simply tacking on more content or tweaking existing numbers.

I don't think all those ideas are all that small, and there are many others around. You seem to think that Civ has reached its greatest possible height with Civ IV, but others don't necessarily agree.

This is an exciting idea. Except that no one has any clue what the impact would be on game play. If they go on without government promotion, you have to ask yourself what choices the player makes. Moreover, what do novels, music, and architectural styles do? Do they all do the same thing, or are there multiple different types?

That would probably be interesting for the game developers to find out.

There are currently 40 resources in the game. That's about the same number of buildings. The same as the number of national wonders and great wonders added together. How is Firaxis going to create a whole resource-processing system without adding 40 new "processed materials" like alcohol, canned fruit, etc.? They can't. And they won't double or triple the number of resources, because it goes against their core design principles.

I did not suggest the number of resources be drastically increased, but certainly the game could handle some processing of raw materials. Not to say that they all need to be accompanied by a processed product. How do you process gold? Those who don't like processing resources could simply turn off the option. I'd rather have more resources than a radically increased number of new technologies. In fact, if there is one aspect of the game I am a bit tired of, it is this constant buying or selling or extorting technologies. That's not how it works, and it gets boring. As I said, I'd like to see any technology that is available for you to research, and which is possessed by at least one civilization you are in direct contact with (that is to say, that you could trade goods with), automatically get revealed to you after a certain period of time, the time span needed depending on your level of development and on how expensive the technology in question is. As happened in the real world.

This "Tell us the secret of Alphabet or die!" or the "I'll trade you Alphabet and 200 gold for Civil Service" stuff is one thing in Civ that I do find a bit fatigueing. I'm not suggesting it be scrapped altogether, but in the real world, most discoveries are simply assimilated by cultures exposed to them after some time has passed, and I find that much more satisfactory. There could be a few technologies (fission, for example) that take a long time to research unless you manage to steal or trade or get them for free from an ally.

How are you going to add lots of minor civilizations on the map when even 20 civilizations slows down a hell of a lot? What are you going to do about 5 minutes between turns? Isn't this going to clutter up the map and make it harder to found your own cities, which a lot of people love? What's stopping minor civilizations from just being empire-food, ultimately making war a no-brainer? Why let a minor civilization take the spot of a major civilization?

Because it might be fun? Also, I must confess that my computer can handle lots of civilizations without any problem. Not that I am usually interested in having the maximum number of civs in a game, being a builder by temperament.

My point isn't that Civ is at its logical end. There are lots of cool ideas, but they necessarily involve jumping away from the current sweet spot. My point is there's a lack of creativity to take it passed the next jump. And Firaxis won't jump away from the sweet spot unless it's safe. If no safe route can be found, we're stuck with mod or XP type material "4 new civics options, 3 new wonders, and horses that move".

This isn't so much a doomsday prophecy as it is a challenge to this community: improve your suggestions. It matters.

I think you are being unduly pessimistic, my friend. I think there are lots of good suggestions around, and creative people at Firaxis to investigate them *and* to think up things on their own. Also, there are some things from earlier versions of Civ that I *do* want to see return. The High Council from Civ II, for example, with those actors. They were a blast! Of course, they should be another option to turn off if you don't like it. The same goes for the throne room from Civ II. And when a civ has become extinct, I think it merits more than a brief mention in the background. That popup announcement with a sad little tune should never have been taken out of the game.

 

[NYHunter]

I am sorry that after spending more than an hour reading through all the post and thinking that I cannot remember who said what, when and I do not have as much spare time as I would like to go and quote everybody on every single thing. I just wanted to give my opinions on several things.

1) I do not consider this to be an end of creativity for Civilization. While it is true that CivIV has introduced a lot of new features especially with BTS coming out, that doesn't mean that a) there are no new ideas or features that could be worked on, and it also certainly doesn't mean mean b) that these new as well as current features/aspects to the game can't be expanded on in new ways. And that is really what was mainly done.

2) It is repeated that things can't be done without radical changes that Firaxis won't do unless there is a clear safe way. And there is emphasis that no one knows how to do certain things. Well, I must point out that I don't believe they knew how to implement many things such as religion. They came up with ideas on how to implement these features and tested them out. That is how things will be added on/changed. Firaxis will figure it out, and as we know Firaxis loves to place so much emphasis on game play over realism which is why they didn't go with ideas like "Dark Ages". I believe that just because WE don't know right NOW how to change Civ 5 enough to a) improve the game and b) make it different enough from previous versions, doesn't mean that no one will figure it out. Creativity certainly is there, even if many of the ideas seem small in nature, the fact is they could actually end up being bigger.

3) While many suggest that people are getting tired of the old same format, There are already a lot of people who say Civ 4 is too DIFFERENT. Now I am not going to pick a side on this issue, but I will say there does need to be very careful consideration in which direction the game goes next. I mean expanding the features and micromangment is one of the ways to open up a new gaming experience but at the same time many people are turned off by this stuff.

4) I agree that Civilization V should not be released soon. I think it would be best to wait quite a while to tell the truth. We need time to see what works and what doesn't in BTS with all these new features. And Firaxis will need time to figure everything out. Plus it would be a good idea to let people move away from Civ, play other games for a while and then introduce Civ 5.

5) There was someone who brought up theories of history and something about how the game is based on a certain theory. I must say I was intrigued by the idea of changing the theory and the idea to format the game so that there really is no victory. However, the problem is that people WANT to win. The idea of "campaigns" is just... well that has existed in other games, but I don't think that is the type of thing that fits into the epic game for Civilization. And then it starts reminding me of games like "Pharoah" and that is just not the type of direction that I think would be wise for Civilization to take.

6) I would just like to say that I am not a fan of this new tech tree mechanic that is being talked of. I will go to the other thread to read more before I make actual comments about it though.

Advanced apologies in any mechanical errors or confusion.

 

[Diamondeye]

... After having fought my way through the entire thread in one streak, I'd like to comment a bit:
I agree totally with Dh_Epic - on about every point.
I really like the tiring, but interesting long reply my mxzs. Keep up the good work.
I have joined the discussion of the techtree that is presented on page 2 - a very interesting idea that would implement most of the details that people such as Öjevind is complaining about - the automatic adoption of technologies.
Furthermore, I have another idea on how to add flavor to the game.
A new combat system - this would clearly pass the famed "botb-test", and would work something like the land combat system of SM's Pirates (the 2004 edition). Imagine an animated teaser kinda like AoK's start movie - a unit is ordered forward, and a short movie of a band of Impi's advancing out on the plains is displayed. The roman counterpart then issues an order to his archer batallion - Another movie, this time a roman centurion lowering his sword and the sky is darkened by hundreds of arrows. Followed directly by a third movie; the Impi's raise their shields and aborb the attack without further damage. They then charge the archers and a short combat is shown before the Impi stands victorious among the bodies of the roman archers. During the fadeout, The roman leader is seen with a diabolic grin whilst ordering a batallion of praetorians againt the Impi.

I find the thread overwhelming and astonishingly good - please keep up the discussion! Unfortunately, it'll be five days before I'm home again, so I'll have a hard time next friday swallowing the next 5 pages of intimate dialogue - nonetheless I am looking foward to it!

Diamondeye

EDIT:
The idea about a civ "waning" over time and ifnally come to an end, allwoing the player new possibilities. I very much like it. The score system (which is cr*p in c-IV - the qutoe should be "Build a michine of destruction to win world domination as quickly as possible - or you'll be Dan Quayle!") could be determined by:
Your reaction to crisises.
How many civilizations you drive into the dust (this would be negative modifier, if you stand the test of time with your starting Civ, you're definately a master, and even then, luck is needed aswell).
Your different civilizations' culture - and how much of it that persisted for how long (adding a new meaning to culture!)

 

[Wodan]

Going back to the civil war (etc) ideas...

I just read The Warlock in Spite of Himself and Diamondeye's comments made a connection. They key to any large government / empire (large in the sense of territory covered) is communications and speed of transport. It's much harder to stage a rebellion if the capitol is just a phone call away and the police just need to make a phone call to whistle up a couple of regiments from the next province. Conversely, if you're Rome, where it takes weeks to get a message out, you get rebellions, civil wars (Rome was infamous for their fears of victorious generals taking control of their legions and marching on the capitol), and barbarian raids on the frontier all the time.

And so, that's one way to "bring balance to the Force". Civ right now is HUGELY imbalanced to encourage early wars of aggression and conquest.

So, here are my rambling thoughts. Number of cities and distance of each from capitol would all increase your chance of having a rebellion, civil war, or raid on your frontier. Certain techs each have a modifier to decrease the chances of these things happening: communications (telegraph, telephone, radio, satellites), transport (railroad, sea transport).

BTW, by "raid on the frontier" I envision something more like SMAC with mindworms popping up, than like the single barb coming out of the fog. Thius wouldn't replace the barbs from the fog, it would be in addition to it. Sometimes these would be more like viking raids with the barbs coming from the sea. Sometimes it would simply be a bunch of, let's call them "brigands" that simply appear in a tile near the frontiers of your empire.

Also, I'd like to see corsairs (pirates) added in. That's a huge historical hole in the game right now.

Wodan

 

[Mxzs]

Also, I'd like to see corsairs (pirates) added in.

"Put back in," don't you mean?

I am really glad to see barbarian cities return in Civ4, but I still miss the guys landing on your coasts. It made navies actually practical ...

 

[Wodan]

"Put back in," don't you mean?

Yeah, whatever. My noun is Civ4 while yours is Civ the franchise.

Wodan

 

[dh_epic]

Commander Bello, I look forward to more comments from you. I think it's important that you understand why certain things haven't worked in the past, though.

Even if we get passed the merits of giving players options that crash their hardware, you can only play a game with as many civilizations as you're given. That said, I suppose it's not too bad if the modders add those civilizations... but then you'll never see Civ 5 designed around 67 civilizations -- which I think would be heaps of fun.

No AI in any game ever has really been able to handle pathfinding with zone of control. The ones that have tried have gotten marginal results, and with huge slowdown to peoples' hardware. I don't think you realize just how much time and resources are involved in making Deep Blue. Firaxis decided in Civ 4 to focus on features that the AI could actually use. Company resources are unfortunately a zero-sum game: you can't spend time developing one thing unless you necessarily give up developing something else.

Vice-versa, damage-without-risk catapults were bad even in multiplayer -- it wasn't just the AI. A lot of games descended into battles between catapult stacks. Of course, we have the same problem in Civ 4. I think this is one of the most hopeful areas of improvement for Civilization 5. The problem is a lack of ingenuity. That said, it's going to take creativity to fix this problem -- not simply demanding "Civ 3 with better AI".

Caravans were mostly a micromanagement issue. Although the disproportionate reward for doing something relatively brainless was part of the reason they took it out. Civ 4 has trade routes, with the game automatically picking the X most profitable routes. The player doesn't build each individual route -- instead focusing on macro strategy like who to open your borders with, and which cities to boost revenue in. Any new trade system would have to be more than "Caravans, but better!" You'd have to explain why your new system leads to broad once-every-few-turn choices rather than turn-to-turn management.

Anyway, the temptation is to get into the small details of each little feature: diplomacy, zone of control, caravans, collateral damage. But the REAL issues are things like game-development time, programming resources, and micromanagement. Someone who says "I want MORE micromanagement" or "why can't they make deep blue?" may be able to envision a fun game for some audience, but they'll probably never be satisfied by Firaxis.

(And "Zone of Control" wouldn't pass the "back of the box" test anyway. Most people don't really care.)

 

[dh_epic]

I'm glad most people are getting it. The problem isn't a lack of ideas. The problem is that most ideas seem too ambitious for Firaxis. (Or, they're too small for me to get excited. Although I'm sure the fan-boys would go out and buy Civ 5 even if it was just Civ 4 XP with revamped graphics.)

Öjevind Lång and NYHunter are onto something in their responses... it's not up to us to come up with how these ideas are to be implemented. "Leave it to Firaxis, they'll figure it out." People asked for religion -- but couldn't figure out what it would do aside from Holy Wars and religious units. Firaxis ignored religious units and gave us religion in Civilization 4. In that sense, they listened to the fans. But the problem is that Civil Wars are not the same thing as religion.

Religion, I can imagine Firaxis creating a prototype of Civilization 4. They might create a "Religion" wonder that gives you some commerce and culture. I can actually imagine them tweaking the wonder until they came up with religions coming from techs, rather than production. I'm only speculating, of course. But that's because religion in Civilization 4 actually turned out quite simple, even boring. At least it passed the back of the box test. And it serves as an example of them taking a vague fan suggestion and turning it into reality.

Civil war would pass the back of the box test too, except every implementation suggested seems to run into problems. I suspect this is why Firaxis hasn't done it yet. It's not enough to say "Civil War punishes you for insufficient communication". You have to ask yourself what the point of civil war is if players quickly learn that 6 cities is optimal. Players learn to wait until they can build telephone lines, at which point they go to 10 cities. Once players learn those limits, there's no more civil wars. Firaxis may as well have created a hard limit on your maximum number of cities. You might respond by making civil war aggravated by invasion or random disasters, but then you still run into the problem that losing half your empire is an instant loss. An event that instantly makes your civilization non-competitive is not fun. Getting rid of the victory conditions altogether makes civil war work for realism... but then what's the point of the game?

The last bastion of hope for a lot of people is to respond with "ok... I know you say Firaxis won't do this... but they should do it anyway because it will be fun for me!" A lot of folks would rather have twice as many resources in Civilization 5. A lot of folks would rather scrap technology trading as unrealistic. Plenty of folks want to play a realistic simulation where it's not all about who wins. Do you honestly think Firaxis will go this route? I don't.

NYHunter seems a bit closer to the mark. There's a lot of people who already thought Civ 4 was too much change. Too much micromanagement. These people are arguably a more important market for Civilization 5 than us: the hardcore, who want Civ 5 to continue innovating.

Of course, there are still good ideas out here. I raise this thread not to knock everyone down, but to challenge people to think harder, and to bring the best ideas to the surface.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

The last bastion of hope for a lot of people is to respond with "ok... I know you say Firaxis won't do this... but they should do it anyway because it will be fun for me!" A lot of folks would rather have twice as many resources in Civilization 5. A lot of folks would rather scrap technology trading as unrealistic. Plenty of folks want to play a realistic simulation where it's not all about who wins. Do you honestly think Firaxis will go this route? I don't.

I would not want to scrap technology trading completely but to tone it down so technologies do come to you in time even if you don't reseach them. I like the idea of some of your research going to discoveries you can't be sure of beforehand.

Another thing: the Emperor of China forbade all export of silkworms in order to retain the Chinese monooly on the manufacture of genuine silk. However, in the end two monks smuggled silkworm larvae out of the country inside their hollow staffs. One could have fun with breaking monopolies of other, similar resources, by which I don't mean walking out with lumps of coal in your pockets.

I also want to thank you for starting the thread. Discussing new ideas, suggesting new things, is always good. Though, frankly, at the moment I have problems concentraing on anything except BtS. May Firaxis rot in hell if they don't produce it (in a playable, bug-free form) in July!

 

[Wodan]

One quick comment, then I have to run.

In regard to civil wars, I suggested an level of probabilitiy, and that's a very different thing than a hard-coded number. That's why we have percentages in battles and a hundred other areas of the game. If it was a fixed number, then players would quickly learn that attacking with a unit 4 points stronger is always optimal. But, it's not, and thus, they don't. It then becomes a player's strategic choice: push the limit, or play it safe.

Wodan

 

[NYHunter]

Ummm right now I am confused about the technologu. There are two by ChrTh and one by Mxzd. Would someone hear be kind enough to understand what the difference between each thread is? Or is there no difference? I am confused.

 

[ChrTh]

Ummm right now I am confused about the technologu. There are two by ChrTh and one by Mxzd. Would someone hear be kind enough to understand what the difference between each thread is? Or is there no difference? I am confused.

Mxzs' thread is redoing the Tech Tree using Sets to gain a technology

My two threads are for one system. The first one is redoing how one 'discovers' a tech and the second one is how one 'adopts/embraces' a tech. Since they each use a different mechanic, I thought it made better since to discuss each part separately.

 

[NYHunter]

Ah, thank you.

Mxzs' thread is redoing the Tech Tree using Sets to gain a technology

My two threads are for one system. The first one is redoing how one 'discovers' a tech and the second one is how one 'adopts/embraces' a tech. Since they each use a different mechanic, I thought it made better since to discuss each part separately.

 

[NYHunter]

By the way, I wanted to thank dh epic for creating this thread. This is a very important discussion and while some may think it is too early, I think it is good that the community has begun to discuss it now rather than later.

 

[Commander Bello]

Finally have found the time to go through the entire thread.

Please allow me to throw in some general remarks (in no particular order, just as they come to mind):

1. Civil war
2. Tech tree
3. Religions
4. Culture
5. Economics

1 - Civil war
Dh_epic, you (as being devil's advocate) always refer to civil wars splitting your empire into two parts (of almost 50% each,as I assume) and by this, make it game-breaking.
I would agree that things like this are not fun.
But if we look to history, civil wars not necessarily did mean this. Starting with the Romans, civil wars did not split their empire into two weak parts to be consumed by other nations being around.
The American Revolution (which might be seen as some kind of civil war) led to a part of the British Empire got lost - yet, Great Britain after that became the most dominant power for some while.

So, a civil war (spoken in terms of Civ4 to be more understandable) might involve any number of cities in your empire - based on certain parameters.
You have a city with more unhappy than happy citizens? Well, likely to go to revolt, no?
You have some cities in the vicinity, which have more happy citizens, yet some proportion of unhappy ones as well? Now, they have an example of revolt in the neighborhood. There might be some parameters (how long they have been that unhappy fraction etc.) which make one of the remaining "Happy's" turn unhappy - alas, you have the next revolt. And so on.
Disease might give a tendency to make a citizen unhappy, so you would have to take this effect into account as well.
Of course, there have to be counter-measures, like granting the effected cities more luxuries, increasing their garrison or whatever.

2) Tech tree
Regarding research, one could easily imagine different approaches. Why not having techs categorized in different sections, like "environment", "war", "culture" and so on?
Any nation having access to the seas would have an advantage in researching "maritime" technologies. The more sea tiles and ships they have, the higher the advantage.
A nation having access to "crop ressources" like Wheat, Corn and so on, would have advantages for researching agriculture, and follow-ons (Calendar would come to mind). With any additional farm, this advantage would be increased.
A nation having fought many combats or with a certain portion of military would have an advantage to research technologies like Gunpowder, or whatever.
A nation having temples and libraries would have advantages to research culturally oriented technologies, and so on.

3) Religions
Let's be honest, guys. Religions never have been developed based on technologies. They always have been a culturally triggered thing.
Why not change to this approach?
If your nation would hit certain thresholds, you may found a religion. For spiritually oriented nations, the threshold may be lower.
Thus, it depends on your culture, whether you will be the founder of a new religion or not. Have you built obelisks and tombs? Fine, you have good chances to detect the secrets of the supernatural world....

4) Culture
Once again, we should be honest. "Culture" as it is used in Civ4 means "influence". Except for the most early civilizations of mankind, nobody will become part of a certain nation, only because they have books and play music.
At least half of the influence is built on sheer military power.
Why not adopt this principle in Civ5?
A strong military will grant you better chances to spread your influence.
This way, you would even reduce the difference between warmongers and builders - both require to have a sufficient military. And it would coincide with what the player knows from the real world.

5) Economics
One of the weakest part of all Civ iterations.
It has been discussed to a certain degree already in this thread.
Quantifiable ressources are a must, as far as I see it. Conversion of ressources would be a must as well.
Now, Dh_epic said, this would require 40 additional ressources.

I say, no, it doesn't.
Hammers could be converted into ..hmm.. "boxes" (just to find a term for it), let's say by a ratio of 10:9.
This way, your environment provides you with 10 hammers. You will use them to create a craftman's shop. After that, the hammers are converted into "boxes". Any early building could be constructed by either hammers or boxes - but it would take only 80% of boxes to create the building.
Example: temple costs 100 hammers, yet only 80 boxes. That way, the conversion would have saved you ~10 hammers for the construction of the temple.
For military purposes, you would need "swords" (for early units) and "guns" (after gunpowder-units). Both can be built from hammers or "boxes", provided you have constructed your first armory or arsenal in your city.
Luxuries like gold, silver, gems, ivory could be converted into generic "jewelry". Wheat, corn, fish, cow would be converted into "bread".
And so on...

The quantifiable ressources would be converted in let's say, up to 5 or 10 additional ressources.
Easy to understand, as it displays the "real life".
It benefits the builder (person assumed to put more emphasis onto his towns), since the converted ressources are more valuable, and therefore the additional micro-management would pay off.

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These are just some short thoughts, and will require additional balancing, of course.
Nevertheless, they would - without changing the key concepts - give the game a completely new flavour.
And, Dh_epic, don't tell me that this cannot be expressed in short and appealing words at the backside of the box:
"Completely overhauled, intuitive economic system"
"Religions developed by more 'natural' means"
"All new way to spread and extend your empire"....

And one last thing: by requesting "big" changes, you prohibit changes at all.
Honestly, what have been the big changes in Civ4? Would there have been any Civ4 at all, if you would have been the one to decide?
Culture and religions (in form of religious buildings) we already had. Military and wars we had. Great persons we had.

You can always tell the other one: "Hey, c'mon, this change just isn't big enough!"
That way, there will never be any evolution.
What counts is the significance of the sum of changes - even, if any part of them would be just marginal.