Foreign investment

[ShadowWarrior]

I like to suggest a new feature where we can help build improvements for a foreign civ that doesn't have that tech yet, but doing so will cost us. For example, I have currency tech already and can build marketplace. American civ doesn't have currency tech, so I help American civ build a marketplace in one of her cities, but it will cost me 30 gold coins to do that.

We can offer to build these improvements as gifts, or as investments. The first option need no explaining. In the second option (investment), we recieve gold coins regularly for a number of turns. The specific terms of investment will be handled on diplmacy screen. Terms conditions include the number of turns we will recieve gold after we help a foreign civ build an improvement, and the number gold per turn we will recieve, among other things.

We can also offer to help a foreign civ build military units they don't yet have the tech to build themselves. Again, diplomacy screen is where the terms and conditions are discussed. Again, it will cost us some gold to help them build military units, but we will be returned with more gold coins in the long run.

But a more important reason I like to suggest having this feature is that this will create a new strategic element into the game. Lets say I am playing as a tech advanced China. English is technologically not so advanced, and is facing a powerful Russia that wants to conquer the English. I don't want to just give English new technologies out right, so I help her build a few modern military units that she can't build herself. That way, she can defend herself against Russia.

What I am essentially suggesting are features that enable us to calibrate with greater precision how much help we want to give to our allies. After all, we don't want our ally to be too powerful as a result of our help, but we do want to give them enough help that they can defend themselves if it is our interest to keep them alive.

 

[Camikaze]

Reasonably good idea, but I think this would be exploitable.

Say you are playing on a team with someone else. You both have a lot of spare cash. They research some techs, you research others. So you are both able to help each other out with these investments. You can then more readily spend your gold to get improvements (and I assume buildings as well?), and seeing as you could work it so that you are getting gold in return, then you are really not losing anything, but gaining buildings/improvements that you would otherwise not have access to. And you could do this throughout the whole game, before you have universal suffrage, which is the normal civic required to spend gold (although we don't know how on earth this is going to work in Civ 5. Let's just assume the same for the sake of argument).

So, it would be pretty exploitable, I would think. There'd need to be some negative other than 'we don't want to help out people who may become strong', because that probably won't stop you from helping out your allies. Perhaps some sort of economic penalty.