I have only played a few games (I'm in the UK so I've only had the game recently) but there are a few things which I don't think have been greatly talked about which would be simple improvement (IMHO) to the play balance:
1) Wonder production - a few issues here. There is no way to rush except GL - this is a GOOD thing I think (realistic and OK for gameplay), but they have also crippled the means of production by not allowing cut down forests or disbanded units to contribute - WHY????
2) Being beaten to a Wonder - again the concept is OK - why should the player expect to get there first, but the punishment is both draconian AND unrealistic. If (in the real world) you were building pyramids and somebody else did so your partially complete examples would not cease to exists, they just wouldn't be the wonders you had expected. My suggestion is that you SHOULD be allowed to complete partially completed GWs BUT that they are somewhat 'crippled' - effects halved and cultural value halved.
3) Switching production part way through - personally I think SMAC had it right with this one - possible, but only with loss (I think it was 50% in SMAC) of shields built up. This would only work (in gameplay terms) in combination with at least (2) above (and probably (1) too for Forbidden Palace reasons)
4) Colonies - I think these are under-useful and IMHO best ignored in the current setup. My suggestion would be that the addition of a second worker could upgrade them to cities (would need some penalty though otherwise why build settlers?! - gold also required maybe)
5) Sensitivity to starting conditions - I find that too often there is something critically bad about a starting position. Examples are no rivers, no iron anywhere nearby, stuck at the end of a strng out landmass (which means crippling corruption later because of a non-central capital). My suggestion wouold be that the map generator run a simple position evaluation on the starting point of each civ (weighted sum of resources, rivers, bonus tiles, etc by inverse distance) and 'tweak' the map to bring them within some tolerance of one another. In this way a 'fair' (but not necessarily bountiful) starting position can be assured.
6) Useless navies??? This may just be my playing style, but on most maps (except archipeligos, which I've more or less given up on for corruption reasons) I find that I don't really need to construct naval units, because there is so much local landmass available that I can win without worrying about other continents (up to Monarch anyway - haven't yet tried higher). I think this is really a map generator thing and comes down to the problem of massive corruption which is putting me off archipeligos. Not sure what to do about this (???)
1) Wonder production - a few issues here. There is no way to rush except GL - this is a GOOD thing I think (realistic and OK for gameplay), but they have also crippled the means of production by not allowing cut down forests or disbanded units to contribute - WHY????
2) Being beaten to a Wonder - again the concept is OK - why should the player expect to get there first, but the punishment is both draconian AND unrealistic. If (in the real world) you were building pyramids and somebody else did so your partially complete examples would not cease to exists, they just wouldn't be the wonders you had expected. My suggestion is that you SHOULD be allowed to complete partially completed GWs BUT that they are somewhat 'crippled' - effects halved and cultural value halved.
3) Switching production part way through - personally I think SMAC had it right with this one - possible, but only with loss (I think it was 50% in SMAC) of shields built up. This would only work (in gameplay terms) in combination with at least (2) above (and probably (1) too for Forbidden Palace reasons)
4) Colonies - I think these are under-useful and IMHO best ignored in the current setup. My suggestion would be that the addition of a second worker could upgrade them to cities (would need some penalty though otherwise why build settlers?! - gold also required maybe)
5) Sensitivity to starting conditions - I find that too often there is something critically bad about a starting position. Examples are no rivers, no iron anywhere nearby, stuck at the end of a strng out landmass (which means crippling corruption later because of a non-central capital). My suggestion wouold be that the map generator run a simple position evaluation on the starting point of each civ (weighted sum of resources, rivers, bonus tiles, etc by inverse distance) and 'tweak' the map to bring them within some tolerance of one another. In this way a 'fair' (but not necessarily bountiful) starting position can be assured.
6) Useless navies??? This may just be my playing style, but on most maps (except archipeligos, which I've more or less given up on for corruption reasons) I find that I don't really need to construct naval units, because there is so much local landmass available that I can win without worrying about other continents (up to Monarch anyway - haven't yet tried higher). I think this is really a map generator thing and comes down to the problem of massive corruption which is putting me off archipeligos. Not sure what to do about this (???)
