I had writen down what i desired CIV VII to be and they kinda nailed it!

[Monstella]

Hello Civfanatics,

I hope you're all doing well. Now before i get into this, know that i'm not a deity player... i tend to play casually around my confort levels but i did write down my thoughts on what I wish CIV VII would be. I wrote these in March of 2024, so a while before the gameplay realease. I'm also not a great writer so it's quite crude, i apologise in advance.

I know you're going to be critical of these because alot of my complaints do clash against each other and you might be tempted to say i'm dumb. I am. But in the end I did feel at least some of them should have been adressed and although i never actually got to send this to Feraxis I'm super excited to see at least some of my points on the new CIV. Alright let's get into this!​

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Diplomacy​

Proxy Wars​

Make wars fun! Join beligerent sides by supporting their cause:

• borrow city production
• gift units
• send money
• share visibility through scouting units
• share logistics

​

City Building​

• If we keep the current system where each "zone" is defined by a type of resource, commercial, culture, prod, etc at least give us the OPTION to remove them when wanted. It can be a colossal handicap if you just happened to missclick and put down a disctrict in the wrong place

• All resources should be abled to be built over, no great nation would refuse to built to make a nuclear power plant just because there were 4 horses eating grass

• Why must cities be blobs? Borders grown, they change, they are lost. Yet borders in civ are descent from the heavens, if you claim a tile that's it. It stays for as long as that city lives or is destroyed. This as always bothered me. Why can't tiles be more flexible, maintain your borders through population instead of bizarre culture growth, if you are at odds with another civ you should be able to negoiate this tiles instead of conquering an entire city. Shapes shapes shapes... how many countries are shaped like blobs? A few. But coutries and nations are shapped by many aspects. This could use alot of work. And perhaps importantly, more interaction. We're all colored map nerds. Allow us this

• anything that is manmade should be destroyable: a great many deal of monuments have been destroyed in history due to erosion or conflicts or drastic changes in a regions political landscape, why are civ's wonders and districts magically imune to this?

Resources​

There should be more to resources than mere extraction, they should be transporter to cities through logistical lines. Our History has at many occurences been defined by where trade routes can go or not, either by limitation of geography or for political reasons. This should apply to the transport of luxuary and strategic resoruces between your cities but currently they just magicly transport

Strategic Resources​

Stragic resources should require certain infrastructures to be used. How many times have nations prospered by simply selling their extracted good? And other nations focus on manufacturing when they are unlucky enough to simply spawn in a region with very scarse resources? This would allow for more cooperation with other nations and make you think twice before atacking or provoking other states

War​

Atrition​

Desert, Tundra, Jungle, Hills or Plains... civ units are prepared for any field of battle no matter if it's in the capital or on the other side of the world it seems as if they eat from thin air and care not for their human need...make supply lines for your armies. if they're too far without logistical supply from your homeland or an ally they should either start to suffer passive damage or have their damage output lowered. Many wars have been lost by eager generals who thought about the victory before thinking about the battle

Loyalty​

Yea the idea is interesting but the implementation isn't the greatet... there's no need to make it easy, but at least they should make it possible, a city won't rebel if it's just been conquered... here's some adaptations:

• Each non-support and non-civilian unit should enforce loyalty
• the higher the city the pop the higher the resistance should be
• Gouvernements, Religions, Diplomatic Stances should have passive loyalty effects
• The infrastructure that connects conquered cities to your empire should have an impact
• The time a city as belonged to a civ should have an impact unless it was changed via diplomacy

I'm sure other ideas will come to me, but it's clear that it's not a fun mechanic when trying to play domination, especially when other victory types have no such restraints

Dare to learn from others success and failures (and your own!)​

I'm sure we've all heard and played a game that came out in 2020: Humankind by Amplitude studios. Many people called this the Civ killer because it explores certain mechanics that have never been touched by other 4x games. Currently i can kindly say civ remains my favourite game by several marks. But I think there's a few things that civ could take away from this game... a few things that civ had even made in previous games but got rid of:

• army stacks
• causes belli actually matters: define goals and if you win, get them.
• warfire flux: nations have thounds of personnel, at any time in history, yet civ always makes you feel like you're always playing with 10 units in any given front, humankind gives a vast rework on this
• going into a new age FEELS different, not just some +5 bonus on a building. the map actually advances with time
• diplomacy diplomacy diplomacy diplomacy how many times must people complain? People want AI that feels realistic, AI can do as much war as they want, but if you dare defend back the entire world will denounce you and even throw a Urgency Operation to stop you, it's not a fun mechanic, but it could if it made sense

New Ideas​

As you're clearly aware by my several points there are certains things that aren't always necessarly going to work when making a good game-realism equilibrium, but i would like to see a few NEW things:Factions: every leader of every nation is the uncontested leader from the birth of humanity to sailing the stars... this imortality could be thought about, make leaders less rigid, allow for more interesting diplomatic situations. I'm not asking for CK3 over here, just ANYTHING that makes diplomacy worth doing for reasons other than points go up or points go down. I don't care of norway likes my one boat, this isn't engaging gameplay, it's repeated traits that you know in advance you have to do or you won't make friends, while the AI makes 0 effort to please YOU. More and more Civ as felt like every "decision" i make is predefined by parameters the moment the game starts. Location, civ leaders, resource placement. even your gouvernements will depend on those factors. There's very little "free" choice unless you want to go down the path of roleplay with lower difficulties


So what can be done to do this?

• Reform civs to be all rounders as to how they achieve victory... but give them specialised tools. It seems like a paradox but so are humans, we all have the same abilities when we are born, we can walk, we can think we can craft, it doesnt matter if you're egyptian, brazilian or indian. Why should it matter in civ? Develop skills, don't be born with them is all i say

• 
  Don't make resources spread out, make specialised nations when you're given the chance, this goes against my previous point. However, they have to go with one not both. History as shown that regions of the world are rich in certain minerals. Civ however feels like pasta. they put everything mixed and spread it out equally. It doesnt make much sense, though this has been somewhat more consistent in civ 6 as you can choose the quantity of spawn .... but not regions...