Features that Civ 7 Could Do Without

Oh, yes, the nice days of the AI just randomly settling in the middle of my cities because they found one lonesome tile that hadn't quite been claimed yet.

Thanks but no thanks.

I hate this, Civ7 definitely needs a much better AI compared to Civ6.

100% - loyalty pressure is probably the best mechanic introduced into Civ6 IMO

I see your point, the loyalty system fixed that bizarre spread of cities everywhere by the AI. However, something like "loyalty pressure" is totally nonsense, it should be "cultural" or "ethinic" pressure, related to something like "nationality".
 
I hate this, Civ7 definitely needs a much better AI compared to Civ6.



I see your point, the loyalty system fixed that bizarre spread of cities everywhere by the AI. However, something like "loyalty pressure" is totally nonsense, it should be "cultural" or "ethinic" pressure, related to something like "nationality".

I suspect firaxis would rather not to add ethnicity back into the game... But if they did I agree that part of the loyalty system would be a great way to do it and to a certain extent loyalty is intended to be a sanitized version of ethnicity in the game.
 
But I'm not in the group who wants civ to be a perfect simulation of world history.
Neither I'm. I agree that Loyalty solved (to a great degree) the funky AI Settling behaviour and allows for peaceful conquest of Cities, but I think it's too passive IMO, where even Religion that should be passive requires actually active attention from the Player. You can easily forget about it once you have settled your Cities in good positions.
 
Neither I'm. I agree that Loyalty solved (to a great degree) the funky AI Settling behaviour and allows for peaceful conquest of Cities, but I think it's too passive IMO, where even Religion that should be passive requires actually active attention from the Player. You can easily forget about it once you have settled your Cities in good positions.

Perhaps have certain civics weaken loyalty gained towards your own civ for everybody once the first player researches them? Things like exploration, mass media etc... which would let people know that the grass was greener on the other side. Maybe weaken the effect for the first player so there's an incentive not to just avoid the civics...

Add loyalty pressure from some buildings like broadcast centres?

But I'm not super convinced there need to be massive changes...
 
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I largely read loyalty pressure as being a form of immigration pressure - if you settle far away from your core, but close to an enemy's more populous city, then it's very likely that the population of your new colony is going to involve a lot of migration from those larger nearby cities. Also much stronger economic and cultural exchange ties.

Just, without actually having to invoke ethnicity and other dicey concepts, which end up abstracted.
 
Ethnic pressure might really be a controversial feature in the game, but I think cultural pressure would work perfectly well. Furthermore, cultural dissemination could influence political and ideological issues. If you don't have enough cultured generation, other civs can dominate you culturally and you will be forced to change your political or philosophical compositions of your government or your people will revolt against you.
 
Frankly I find loyalty flips FAR more grounded in reality than culture flips based on producing culture in terms of changing the allegiance of cities. Immigration from nearby urban centers (so a loyalty penalty from large cities from other civilizations being nearby), lack of support from the motherland (so a loyalty penalty from lack of your own nearby large cities, but a loyalty bonus from governors and certain policies), are much more significant factor in cities and territories joining a different country (think: Texas) than music, literature, movies and the ilk.

Cultural pressure working to affect ideologies is a wholly different thing, and would be great, but it should be separate from the city flipping mechanism.
 
Frankly I find loyalty flips FAR more grounded in reality than culture flips based on producing culture in terms of changing the allegiance of cities. Immigration from nearby urban centers (so a loyalty penalty from large cities from other civilizations being nearby), lack of support from the motherland (so a loyalty penalty from lack of your own nearby large cities, but a loyalty bonus from governors and certain policies), are much more significant factor in cities and territories joining a different country (think: Texas) than music, literature, movies and the ilk.

Cultural pressure working to affect ideologies is a wholly different thing, and would be great, but it should be separate from the city flipping mechanism.
When I say I want some kind of culture flipping I'm not necessarily thinking about cities joining other civilizations but more along the lines of cultural diffusion.

I'm thinking of something like Chinatown in NYC. In a civ game that would equal a minority of ethnic Chinese citizens living in the city of New York which happened as a result of immigration factors. That would cause a minor culture and eventually tourist pressure from New York to Chinese cities. If the Chinese population in your city grows it could produce major pressure. I'd also love to add religion to this as well.

Also cities conquered would most likely retain the majority of the ethnic group of the conquered people, so early warmongers would definitely be punished in a cultural victory late game if civs were not completely wiped out, or culturally absorbed. :)

I'd much rather a mechanic like that than the current loyalty system, but that's just me. I can only dream that it will happen.
 
Once you try to model the Composition of the population of a city the complexities start to multiply . . .

First, you have to very carefully define what constitutes the Definition of a separate population: some amorphous 'culture', ethnicity, religion, a Loyalty factor related to some or all of the previous?
IF you are going to use the definition to affect settling of cities and ultimate fate of cities, then you have to figure in Peaceful Immigration, Forced Immigration ("refugees") Conversion/Assimilation (minorities living within a larger 'culture', religion, or ethnic majority for a long time) and Politics - as in, does the City/Civ welcome immigrants or refuse them, is it open to assimilating 'foreigners' (even ones who were there first, as in a Conquest) or does it value the 'exclusiveness' of its own culture/religion/ethnic group/whatever.

I suggest that whatever gets adopted, it will have to be simplified, or the actual mechanics will have to be kept mostly invisible to the gamer to avoid giving him/her a splitting headache.

I also suggest that a great deal of the actual process will be modified or dependent on Civics and Social Policies adopted by the various groups involved rather than any 'innate' characteristic of the population(s). That has the advantage of giving the gamer some vestige of control over what's happening, which is almost always better than simply making in-game actions like forward settling in every case virtually Prohibited, or making multi-cultural cities a constant source of Loyalty problems.
 
Resource Rationing
This is one feature we can lose. it's very annoying when we get some Oil. Use a builder to set up drilling. Then have to wait a few turns to produce enough to feed a few Tanks and Infantry units. Then see our Oil supply deplete to zero. Back in Civ III. Once we obtain important resource it is not so easily exhausted. And we can begin building Oil-related Units without limit. To me Civ III was the best of the franchise in many regards. And very notably how it handled the resource system.
 
1. I think some yields could be reworked, Hammers being one. I find them too abstract. Production should maybe come from Population and then suffer modifiers caused by certain civics and techs, generally relating to improvements in productivity. Woods and Mines could maybe provide basic resources instead, generally timber and stone. Then Faith, Culture and Science too. Frankly I'd probably only keep Food and Gold as basic yields. Somebody somewhere is going to reinvent the wheel at some point in regards to yields in 4x games and make it work.

2. Not all Pops need to be manually controlled, the game could include a system where control over Pops ranges from Despotic/Totalitarian to near total freedom. The types of systems available would change/increase throughout the ages. Free Pops are more productive but they do whatever they please. Some buildings, improvements, etc, can only be built by free pops and the chances increase with the more free pops you have. The Pops the player has control over can be directed as usual. Pops should be singular units, which can be tracked, each having a culture, a class, a religion, etc. They can migrate too. They can also change their culture, class, religion...

3. Drop 1UPT. Civ doesn't need to copy Humankind in regards to combat, but it could copy it and Through the Ages in regards to stackable armies. You'd need to unlock certain military Civics in order to make specific stacks of units. As you move through the ages, new types of stacks become available. Some may be unique or more easily researchable by certain Civs (e.g. Mongolia can have stacks of Light Cavalry composed of 3-4 units, long before anyone else). So even if you're technologically advanced, a Civ with access to more advanced or a wider range of military compositions (unlocked by civics) could have the upper hand in combat.
 
1. I think some yields could be reworked, Hammers being one. I find them too abstract. Production should maybe come from Population and then suffer modifiers caused by certain civics and techs, generally relating to improvements in productivity. Woods and Mines could maybe provide basic resources instead, generally timber and stone. Then Faith, Culture and Science too. Frankly I'd probably only keep Food and Gold as basic yields. Somebody somewhere is going to reinvent the wheel at some point in regards to yields in 4x games and make it work.
That would be an interesting change that I wouldn't mind. Buildings like the monument wouldn't need timber while a watermill would need both both timber and stone to build. Maybe introduce clay as a resource as well for a granary.
 
Loyalty system cripples AI expansion even more (beyond combat system), doesn't model any realistic internal dissent, the only thing that matters in it is - paradoxically - to have more pops and cities, and it makes any kind of colonial empires and oversea expansion very awkward for humans and impossible for AI.

Also borders don't just change like a living organism, they change through coercion, violence, treaties, local
coups and protests, collapse of some state, but not just... casually.
Look across the world and you will find many separatist and really unloyal regions of some countries that still can't just leave as long as their regimes are strong and situation is hard. Kurds, Darfur, Myanmar...

Let's just design something completely different.
 
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1. I think some yields could be reworked, Hammers being one. I find them too abstract. Production should maybe come from Population and then suffer modifiers caused by certain civics and techs, generally relating to improvements in productivity. Woods and Mines could maybe provide basic resources instead, generally timber and stone. Then Faith, Culture and Science too. Frankly I'd probably only keep Food and Gold as basic yields. Somebody somewhere is going to reinvent the wheel at some point in regards to yields in 4x games and make it work.
I would like to see that happen. Though, it would require a rework of not just the whole Production System but also of the Resource Requirements for Units and Projects and to decide what's the Production Cost of Units, a New Currency for Units (Training)? or just a reduction in the Production Cost because of the splitting production from Lumbermills and Mines from the Production of the City?

I see that as a good thing for longer Games and Micromanagers, but for faster Games it won't be an easy task to Balance that so that the Pacing of the Game won't suffer much from it.
2. Not all Pops need to be manually controlled, the game could include a system where control over Pops ranges from Despotic/Totalitarian to near total freedom. The types of systems available would change/increase throughout the ages. Free Pops are more productive but they do whatever they please. Some buildings, improvements, etc, can only be built by free pops and the chances increase with the more free pops you have. The Pops the player has control over can be directed as usual. Pops should be singular units, which can be tracked, each having a culture, a class, a religion, etc. They can migrate too. They can also change their culture, class, religion...
That kinda helps with micromanagement and allows for more strategic management, so that if the Player invests in a science infrastructure, then the Citizens of that City will most likely specialize in Science, therefore the City will specialize in Science. As long as the Citizens don't have too much personality traits, so that the player won't be overwhelmed with information when going to the City Panel, then everything should be fine: a Religion, Class, Culture and perhaps a Specialty Skill (what they have acquired knowledge in/are efficient in, which is acquired the more they work in a certain building/improvement - Ex: if it's Science then they generate more Science if they are in a Campus) shoud be enough. I also like that because it also would add more depth and importance to the Governments and make each Type more unique.

Loyalty system cripples AI expansion even more (beyond combat system), doesn't model any realistic internal dissent, the only thing that matters in it is - paradoxically - to have more pops and cities, and it makes any kind of colonial empires and oversea expansion very awkward for humans and impossible for AI.
Exactly. Although it solves the Issue of AI spamming Cities everywhere, that mostly helps the Human Player not necessarilly the AI. The main Issue that I don't like with Loyalty is that it makes Colonisation very difficult. My Ideal Play is having a City in each Continent/Landmass, apart from the Cities in my Home Continent, each located in a strategic Location, but with Loyalty that's nearly an impossible Task, and very annoying to say the least.
 
City centers HP. As AI will not build defence units because city centers are enough.
This is the one and most important point of all.

None of the points the OP mentioned, do affects the AI ability to produce units and fill the map to provide some good FIGHTS!

Support units are strong. Air support units would make a lot of sense IF Ai would actually build ANY Air unit...

Armies are great, just not the civ rev. style adopted in civ VI. Civ III Armies yeah.

Barb scouts could get down the bin..
 
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As with many things in design, elegance is served with regularity. If we design a mechanic so that it is like a host of systems, each of which is a version of the same thing, then the game feels more cohesive no not that word, but... well it will feel simpler but also extensive in meaning. So, for example, returning to the idea of connectedness being a root of gameplay, the city would have its allegiance, which makes it your city and not another player's. But it also has a majority religion, right? And it has other religions in it, but one of them decides or controls what 'religion stuff' that city does. The institution of a policy, from the city level (player) could make it so that religious tolerance is in effect and that the effects aren't of a domination variety where one religion rules and the others submit.

A city could have a composition of -any number- of these substances. Substances like religious adherence. The sources , coming from other populations (settlements), would influence the target city through the connectedness features, contributing a magnitude of "influence" , the meaning of which depends entirely on what the simulated substance is. And it shifts the local situation. But a rule decides what state the city is in from the measurements of those influence, -within that subsystem-, meaning, it just selects the contributing influences and assigns a rank to them, possibly starting out as just 0 (not in majority) or 1 (majority).

Cities being settled inside your region is extremely annoying because it's frustrating, and also stupid, and looks like an exploit, and also stupid. Settling colonies is something we want to see, while balancing how there are some difficulties which should appear while not also being utterly impossible. Connectedness is, once again, a strong device for cutting up the scenarios along the lines we want. Maybe, if you don't fully enclose a space.... and another people maintain a road , and have a very strong identity of religion, or perhaps a civil rights concept like citizenhood, then they will persist in their consciousness as distinct from the surrounding state. And success in that distinctness, too.


I'm with Boris on the idea that going into simulating pops will multiply and create headaches, but, perhaps we could do the heavy work for the player, list out what elements we sorta roughly kinda want to be a factor, and then make a simple cutoff rule that keeps the actual game in a state impacted by the simulated concept. Just enough , of things we design to contribute, so that we and the player can look at it and go "yeah, that's immigration." We don't make a formula of any complexity, and we certainly don't hide math you -need- to know inside the manual. The player needs to know what next turn will be, and we just put an immigration term in the things it affects (e.g. just population and religious devotees) and the player can expect it to be equal everywhere it exists and the determination of if it's there is no more than any other math you do for, like, the exact size of a food bucket or, at most, for a combat damage spread.
My point being, first, let's imagine it more ideally than the game will actually be. Then corrupt the hell out of it to cram it in to the small head space. We can optimize the distortions only going in that direction.
 
It's an unpopular opinion, but I strongly agree with your first point. The espionage game is tedious, and there's nothing fun or interesting about it.

Espionage can be loads of fun in stategy games - Master of Orion allowed you to steal techs or sabotage buildings and then frame other players for it. In that game and its successors, Spies weren't individual units, but functioned like a resource. You spent production to create a certain amount of spies, then assigned them to the race you wanted to spy on. You could have 15 spies at home doing counter espionage, 5 infiltrating the Psilon to steal techs, another 7 infiltrating the Sakkra to sabotage their infrastructure, another 3 in the Sillicoid empire to hide and feed you information on the fleet. Every Spy also cost credits to maintain, meaning the races with Eco bonuses (the ones that also tend to have bad production/armies) were generally the best at this game. It was loads of fun! Why wouldn't Civ 7 simply steal this entire idea and transpose it into a historical context? I see no reason why they couldn't.

While they're at it, also steal MoO's diplomatic victory system because Civ 6's blows.

Rock Bands; This was a cute idea. But it didn't really fit with this game. And it can become an annoyance and disruption of game-flow.

More or less. I hate the aesthetics more than anything. The idea is good, but the name "rock band" is so niche and it's an awkward fit for what they're actually trying to do. No rock band *ever* inspired me to visit a city half the world away. They bare mechanics are good, but it needs a reskin.

Civ5's traits had a much more profound impact on how leaders behaved than Civ6's agendas. In my experience, it led to certain metagame relationships with leaders that went beyond just hating Dom Satan. You could rely on Attila, Montezuma, Shaka, and Genghis Khan being rabid warmongers--but if you befriended Genghis, he'd also be a loyal friend whereas Attila and Monty would be backstabbers. Oda Nobunaga would always be a recluse in diplomacy; Dido would be friendly but might backstab you. Etc. It was a much better way to make leaders feel lively and rational; Civ6 leaders act more or less the same except about which transgression they'll throw a hissy fit over. While I'd like to see diplomatic options expanded considerably, I think only minor refinements/expansions to Civ5's AI traits would already be an enormous step forward in diplomacy from Civ6.


Hard agree. Agenda's make for a garbage substitute for actual personality. I don't mind having Agenda's but not at the cost of nuanced AI behaviour. Civ 6's leaders have a lot of personality in their design however, so if Civ 7 could combine Civ 6's designs with Civ 5's coding we would have a game that would feel a lot more immersive.

This is particularly a problem for Writers. We need more Great Work of Writing slots (e.g., why can't libraries hold books? :crazyeye: ), and this is especially a problem for Russia where eventually you own every single GWAM in the game and have long since run out of spots for their works.

Great People in general just need more roles. Currently, most Great People serve their general purpose and a unique purpose depending on which one you got. That's two possible uses, which is really meagre. And most personalized GP bonuses aren't even good enough to warrant their use over immediately popping them!

Frankly I find loyalty flips FAR more grounded in reality than culture flips based on producing culture in terms of changing the allegiance of cities. Immigration from nearby urban centers (so a loyalty penalty from large cities from other civilizations being nearby), lack of support from the motherland (so a loyalty penalty from lack of your own nearby large cities, but a loyalty bonus from governors and certain policies), are much more significant factor in cities and territories joining a different country (think: Texas) than music, literature, movies and the ilk.

Cultural pressure working to affect ideologies is a wholly different thing, and would be great, but it should be separate from the city flipping mechanism.

I think ethnicity should affect city happiness, really. You would forget that's a thing in Civ 6 because it sheer lack of impact Amenities have on actual gameplay. But I do believe Civilians should have an Ethnicity, like they have a religion, and managing your empire's stability in times of peace should be centered around dealing with it. Ethnically different citizens, migrants or whatnot, should have access to cultural amenities in the same way a religious man needs a place for prayer. Familiarization should make outsiders feel more at home, making them less likely to feel as if society is going to cast them out.

One could open a can of worms on how to deal with Ethnicity, and man there are plenty of possibilities some of which dark-sided. EU4 basically has ethnic cleansings as a mechanic (euphemistically named "culture conversions"), but several of that game's other ideas such as Adopting Cultures (maybe spending Culture on that?) could work if Civified properly. Certain Civs, such as America and Assyria, could have bonuses specifically tied to it.

Now as for flipping, to me it makes sense IF (1) the city feels culturally closer to you than it's owner either due to its ethnic make-up or you being its founder (2) the city is REALLY unhappy under its current ruler (3) the owner's empire is unstable and they have no army to deal with the riots. Inventing a mechanic that implements these is possible, although the devs would have to start from from the ground up. I think Firaxis needs to look at Amenities again. It really is city happiness that should determine how loyal a city is, not the size of nearby cities, or shared religion or whatever.
 
Espionage can be loads of fun in stategy games - Master of Orion allowed you to steal techs or sabotage buildings and then frame other players for it. In that game and its successors, Spies weren't individual units, but functioned like a resource. You spent production to create a certain amount of spies, then assigned them to the race you wanted to spy on. You could have 15 spies at home doing counter espionage, 5 infiltrating the Psilon to steal techs, another 7 infiltrating the Sakkra to sabotage their infrastructure, another 3 in the Sillicoid empire to hide and feed you information on the fleet. Every Spy also cost credits to maintain, meaning the races with Eco bonuses (the ones that also tend to have bad production/armies) were generally the best at this game. It was loads of fun! Why wouldn't Civ 7 simply steal this entire idea and transpose it into a historical context? I see no reason why they couldn't.
I suppose, to rephrase, I can imagine an espionage system that is interesting, but I've never seen one from Firaxis.

Civ 6's leaders have a lot of personality in their design however, so if Civ 7 could combine Civ 6's designs with Civ 5's coding we would have a game that would feel a lot more immersive.
100%.

I think ethnicity should affect city happiness, really. You would forget that's a thing in Civ 6 because it sheer lack of impact Amenities have on actual gameplay. But I do believe Civilians should have an Ethnicity, like they have a religion, and managing your empire's stability in times of peace should be centered around dealing with it. Ethnically different citizens, migrants or whatnot, should have access to cultural amenities in the same way a religious man needs a place for prayer. Familiarization should make outsiders feel more at home, making them less likely to feel as if society is going to cast them out.
I've been championing this idea for a while, and I've seen quite a few others doing the same. Hopefully so many people coming to the same conclusion increases the odds that Firaxis will try it.

One could open a can of worms on how to deal with Ethnicity, and man there are plenty of possibilities some of which dark-sided. EU4 basically has ethnic cleansings as a mechanic (euphemistically named "culture conversions"), but several of that game's other ideas such as Adopting Cultures (maybe spending Culture on that?) could work if Civified properly. Certain Civs, such as America and Assyria, could have bonuses specifically tied to it.
I've been pointing to Endless Space 2 a lot as a model (minus the idea of different ethnicities having different bonuses--that could get...unpleasant when dealing with real ethnicities and not alien species), but I also think the Paradox model works, too. I've been doing a lot of pointing to CK3 on how I want religion handled. I agree that America and Assyria are prime candidates for handling ethnicity; Persia is another. Isolationists like Japan and Egypt could also have some penalty related to it, offset by other bonuses.
 
Remove the "race" to get a religion. This resulted in the religious abilities were made stronger and stronger to make it worthwhile. There was also the mis-alignment between some civs with religious based abilities and no bonus to getting a religion.

Leader Trading. The UI didn't help me figure out if I should make a trade when offered one so I rarely agreed. Getting multiple pop ups and having to refuses over and over.
 
One thing that has always bothered me is technological disparity damage. For example, I have developed technologically to the point where I can build helicopters. I then use those helicopters to attack a swordsman and the swordsman is able to cause damage to my helicopter. Um, how the f does this happen? I am shooting the dude from a thousand feet in the air. Am I supposed to believe that a swordsman can throw his sword (or spear or javelin or pike or whatever) that far to damage my helicopter or aircraft? This is something that I think really needs to be dealt with in future iterations of the game. I am a person who focuses heavily on science and technology development in my game strategy. As a result, I am often one or two eras ahead of the rest of the world technologically. Inevitably, some douche bag decides to declare war on me and when I attack with my superior military units, they are damaged unrealistically by very primitive weapons. A swordsman is NOT going to do any significant damage to a tank. I mean, seriously, scratching the paint on my tank should not be considered damage. My aircraft should not ever be receiving damage from non-ranged ground units that aren't using gunpowder weapons. Contrary to what Hollywood would have you believe, it is laughable to believe a tank, even the most modern we have today, can shoot down a jet fighter. Maybe a sub-sonic aircraft like a helicopter or a P-51 Mustang, but not a jet. That is what you have anti-aircraft guns and mobile SAMs and Stinger missiles for. The combat system really needs to be overhauled to be a bit more realistic. I don't care if you have a thousand swordsmen attacking one Panzer, they simply aren't going to damage it beyond scratching it.
 
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