Do you guys want civ 4 to be more realistic?

[rden]

there's a game in devopment called "Strength and Honor".
http://www.ezgame.com/SNH/index.html

It seems to combine elements of Civilization and Total War
and looks very promising.

Keep an eye on it...

 

[Red Boxer]

I would like to see civs rise and fall.

A slower expansion for all. Allowing the world to remain small until industrialization. Migrations. Exporting production/food. A political system involving both Government Organization and Economic organization. Vassal/Satallite States is beautiful. Revolutions (which lead to new nations rising up; Civ has never really given that much attention. In civ rules the US could not exist, unless we're playing Civ or Civ2 and someone conquers the Brit capital triggering the revolt) Oh well... I could go on, but i won't

Yet.

 

[Dana]

I agree that Civilization 4 should be much more realistic. I personally would like to see more in the areas of trade and diplomacy personally. Then again... it is always fun to blast my enemies into their grave.

 

[Veteranewbie]

I WANT:
better empire development!! (most concerned)
better war system!!
better landscape!!

 

[MattII]

I'd like to see farming as an extension of irrigation, as in thr road/r'road system. I'd also like to see the options for buildings to be a bit more broad, ie. to be able to set the percentage increase for tax/research/entertainment (like shields in Civ3) and for addition of money/shields/food to terrain.

 

[Turner]

What is this obcession with making Civ more realistic? Civ has never been about realism. I mean, c'mon! Romans with nukes? Aztecs with nukes? Puh-lease!

Civ has been about historical-based gaming, as Oda N. said. it's not about accurately re-creating history. Every game, following our history? That would be boring for me. Truly, it would.

Civ started with an idea, a theme, if you will. That theme was expanded on in Civ2, taking the franchise to new heights. It was further expanded on in Civ3, doing things with Civ2 that wasn't thought of, but probably wished for. In Civ4, I'd like to see a leap into new aresas that we've thought about, but don't have. Realism? It's as real as it needs to be. Historical? Again, it's as historical as it needs to be. I don't want to get trapped into a certain mindset and have to play a certain way simply because historically, that's how it happened. Imagine if the French had fought with the British against the Americans in the Revolutionary War. Imagine if Japan came in on the Allied side, and Pearl Harbor never happened. With Civ, it's possible to do that, and to explore possibilities.

I've never played on an Earth map, nor do I intend to. I like the randomness that can be created. I like not knowing where things are going to be, and who my opponets are. I like fighting against one civ for most of my 6000 year reign, then need them to help kill off another opponet and get that win.

I say let Civ4 be as real as Civ3 is. Give us new concepts to play with. I'd much rather see that, then to have the history of the world painstakingly redone.

After all, it's a game. It doesn't need to be historically accurate.

 

[Evie]

Expand diplomacy - yes!

What I would really like to see there: International Conferences. Essentialy, negotiations where more than one nations are present. Would be rather complex to organize, but I think it could be managed.

And that, of course, would solve the "force others to make peace" difficulty - just call them to meet (the computer would decide wheter to take part in the meeting for each country based solely on that country's stance toward YOU) and tell them "peace, OR ELSE..."

Expanding on that idea, Variable-Length treaties.

IE, you can set a specific length in turns to an agreement ("This MPP will last 10 turns"), or a trigger that end the agreement ("we have a military alliance against this nation until we can bring them to surrender" - so that negociating the enemy's surrender is not considered a breach of the treaty). Or "We got to war against them with you, and give you oil *as long as the war last*, and so on.

Also, the "surrender" option in war.

-Surrender cannot be prevented. That is to say, you don't get the usual "the egyptians have requested an audience" message. You get "The enemy wishes to surrender. Refusing the surrender make you a world pariah (ie, everyone consider you a black sheep when it comes to international deals).

-Once a nation surrender, it immediately enter a conference with the nation it surrendered too, and all its allies. During this conference, it may NOT refuse demands. However, you cannot demand cities of that civilization that are its capital or within X distance of it. You can't ask for GPT turns the civ cannot afford, and must leave that civ at least a certain amount of gold. (probably some other minor prerequisites).

---------------------

Another notion I'd like to see :

-Demand Surrender - a command you can use while right-clicking on an enemy town if you have one or more units next to it. The game would then use some calculation comparing the number of units and strenght of theirs between what you and the enemy have within the city radius. If you come out on top of the calculation, the city surrender to you without fighting. Depending on your government, you would probably get slave workers from at least some of the enemy units at this point.

 

[Masquerouge]

I want more government types, something à la Call To Power.
I want more techs and more units ! Maybe multiply all unit stats by 10 so you can have slight variations between the same type of units, according ot the nation that builds it, and depending on the nation's traits. Militaristic would have a bit more attack, expansionnist a bit more movement, scientific a bit more defense, commercial would cost less, agricultural would mean more supporting capacity, and so on. That way each nation would have all of its units being "custom".
I would also like to see commercial resources ; these resources would allow you to gain more money.
More strategic resources would be great, also (let the dream go on ). You don't need just rubber and oil to build a tank ! What about copper, gold, tin, all metals, various type of wood in Ancient ages, sulfur, and so on. So that each civ will have some strategic resources but not all, and trade would become a must. Currently it's not too much the case.

Okay... that's it for now.

 

[Commander Bello]

first of all, welcome to ZXTT and Dana!

@Oda Nobunaga:
Some great ideas! I strongly agree with your posting! Not only would those ideas boost the game, but they wouldn't be too complicated to be implemented, as far as I see. After all, we are talking about a new game with new engine, anyway.

@Mascquerouge:
I agree with you, as well. One thing which should be avoided in Civ4 is this insane use of small integers (warrior 1/1/1, spear 1/2/1 and so on). I guess that most of us agree that it is the early units (the ones with the lowest numbers) that are the most crucial ones - just because the difference of 1 single point can make a great difference.

Furthermore, I would like Civ4 to be more based on economic factors. Units and improvements should cost gold (at least at a higher degree than in Civ3) and less be dependant on shields. This comes important especially as units are concerned. I really hate the effect that a very productive city may create a tough unit every 3 turns - but will neither suffer population losses nor any economic effects.

 

[Padma]

More realistic?! NO! I agree completely with Oda Nobunaga. Civ is NOT a diplomatic simulation, nor an economic simulation, nor even a "wargame". It is a strategy game about building a civilization.

Yes, I WOULD like to see improved/more varied diplomacy, a better trade system, etc. But they should still remain as simplified, abstract concepts.

 

[Evie]

Or semi-abstract at least. And more important, the micro-management should be kept to an absolute minimum.

I once played a game where you commanded a task force. In it, you could select where each weapon of the task force fired, and plenty of other details like that, with all the weapons set to work exactly as they did in the war.

Sounds cool, right? It wasn't. It was nothing but tedious, cycling through the different weapons, then trying all the possible settings until you hit the right one, and then finally being able to do what you wanted. Usually by the time you got done trying that, your ship was on its way to the bottom. There was just too much micro-management involved.

Thus why Civ should avoid that.

Suggestion which require too much micro-man : You have a certain amount of supply points. Your units requires supply points to move. They can't move if you're out of...(yada yada yada)

Simplified, somewhat abstractified concept : Your infantry/cavalry units are supplied while they are on a road square, or any square except mountains/desert/marshes (they are able to live off the land). Your vehicle units are supplied while they are on a road square. Your ships are supplied while on the coast. All units that are NOT supplied at the start of your turn lose 1 hp. Simple, requires virtually no micro-management, and bring in the notion of supplying units, while somewhat limiting offensive drives.

Hrm. Too bad the Civ IV thread in the general forum is for specific features. Because I'm afraid posting all the specific features (pretty much an in-depth description of my ideal Civ IV) would be considered spamming :-D.

---

And as a final side-note Padma I do not oppose realism per se. I oppose reality. Realism is trying to make the development of the civilization in Civ IV more like how generic development of civilization happened. Reality is trying for superficial changes for the sake of "making civs more like they really were regardless of their in-game circumstances which are often completely different from their real history ones". And more often than not this is based on perceived (and therefore, most often wrong) history.

 

[trumpeteer]

Originally posted by Hellpig

I mean; like are the cities far away from Washington DC really corrupted? I don't think so.

Yeah, it should be reversed, Washington should be the most corrupted city and the farther away from it you get, the less corruption there is...

 

[sealman]

Originally posted by trumpeteer


Yeah, it should be reversed, Washington should be the most corrupted city and the farther away from it you get, the less corruption there is...

It is.

Oh, you mean in the game

back to the question of the thread. Civ 4 does not need to be more realistic... it is a game after all.

 

[Commander Bello]

Originally posted by Oda Nobunaga
[...]Because I'm afraid posting all the specific features (pretty much an in-depth description of my ideal Civ IV) would be considered spamming :-D.
[...]

Not by me. Obviously, you've given *your* Civ4 some thoughts.
Would be nice, if those thoughts were given a space, in which they could be explained in depth.

 

[tigerden27]

How about this for making it more realistic...

Every so often there is a chance of Civil War. 1/3 - 1/2 (or more) of your country decided to split off and make it's own country.

Along with that you have to fight off units you built to just maintain the 1/2 - 2/3 that you still control.

After hundreds of years there is still bitterness and the cities you recapture suffer from futher corruption because of the rebellion.

People are mad over culture flipping, I can't imaging how mad they would be over this.

 

[EddyG17]

culture flipping and rebellions/civil wars will increase with the sense of nationalism but then quickly go to a minimum.

 

[Bluemofia]

well, Civ IV should have a different unit for the chinese, because the riders were only used by the mongols when they caputred that part of china. besides, their unique unit should be a Cho-ko-nu, because in the BCs china had repeating crossbows while they still had bronze swords. those things were easy to operate, all you had to do was load it by putting arrows thrugh the top, and pulling a the string back as fast as possible

 

[akillias]

Put mobility range on some unit in early game bcuz it is not realistic at all that a civ would cross the world just to sneak attack you

 

[Evie]

One idea I'd like to see regarding Civ : some form of social engineering regarding traits. IE, while your civs could start with minor bonus from its traits, as the game progress you get to alter your civ to match its circumstances.

One way to do it would be a screen akin to the income screen, where you have a set amount of point to separate between a few category. Another way to handle things would be instead to steal a page from Role Playing Games - instead of being able to completely switch things about, you HAVE to deal with was already there.

For example, you start the game with 1 point in "Seafaring" and 1 point in "commercial". As the game progress, you get more point to add (And probably the new technologies you find gives you new abilities/traits to invest in). More points in a trait gives you more bonuses from it (for example expansionist 1 gives you access to scouts and eliminate barb huts ; expansionist 2 increase the rate of cities in huts or whatever). The AI civs could probably have a pre-set historical development or (if able to handle it) an advantage-based system (ie, put points in seafaring if on island, etc).

I'd prefer the second way because you can't just clean up what you had before and do something new ; you have to develop on what's already tehre. You CAN put point in developing a seafaring civ even if you don't start with the trait, but getting to the high level seafaring traits is easier if you pick a civ with some points already in it.

 

[kenshi]

I think Call to Power 2 has some very good features which were included in SMAC. Diplomacy was great, since there was much flexibility and options. There was the ability for example to force a country to abandon its nuclear weapons or to stop a war with another country (as I recall.)

The battle system was pretty nifty too. They could band units together into a larger "army."

However the biggest limiting factor is size and complexity of the game. Currently Civ 3 will take 10-20 minutes per turn in the modern age for most people, maximum. If you introduce improved graphics, higher complexity etc, I doubt anyone can play it efficiently enough for a very long time, even taking into consideration the development in computer hardware then.

I used t think individual tech trees and limitations to various civilizations were a good idea, but then I realized it was totally against the whole point of the game. It is not supposed to be a historical portrayal (as someone said.) That is what scenarios are for. It is supposed to be a game where anything can happen. That is the whole point.