Ideas for Civilization 4

[CrONoS_QC]

What it can help to make Civilization more fun... More social engineering... Introduce Religion or Social Ideal, cause, be a buddist nation it's completely different to be a Christian nation...
Can be a Idelism society with socialism value... in that case, People make more or less money, more or less patriotism..etc...

You can Create MTV to make other nation imbecile.. corrupting the youth of other nation Just Kidding...

For me, what we need in Civ4, More Social Engineering/social psychology pattern. Cause evolution it's not only wars,economics and build building to make people happier, Civ Series have just forget the human factor.

CrONoS_QC

 

[wtiberon]

DaDrunkenfish has been drinking waaaaaaay too much. Time to switch to beer don't mess with the hard stuff.

 

[Sayounara]

there should be no science advance limit!

 

[Suki]

I think it would make sense to combine culture happyness culture flipping and inefficency into one dynamic. I the way it is now there are a lot of problems, one being that a city that's celebrating "we love the king day" can still culture flip. what would make sense to me is have the percentage of shields that are lost not to crime but to the underground resistance slowly build up and eventually insted of getting a message saying that a city wishes to join your empire it says that a group of loyalist geurillas has taken to the hills around X, and look it even covers the geurilla effect for when you capture a city in civ 2, and of course you could choose to back or not the geurillas. but it would have to work slightly differently if the two contrise were at peace. maybe the city producing workers who defect to your side... and they do need a system for culture flipping that goes not to an existing civ but to
a new one.
I was thinking that if you vectorise the culture, giving it one dimension for each civ+1 more for "independance" then each turn as each city's culture spreads out, pushing the vector a little longer in your direction, then have the entire vector just decay a bit, add a little to the independance vector depending on unhappieness. Then if a city breaks off to form a new civ take it's current culture vector, count that as the definition for new civ's culture (ex: the starting definition for american culture would be something like 28English, 12Iroquois, and 15independance) then each city needs a new component on their culture vector figure out it's value by projecting their current culture onto that definition vector and taking that length of the projection as their culture value for the new civ, and since nearby city's will be so similarly cultured if one city, the new capital, breaks off the others realise "we're more like them than england" and join in.

do you see it!

also I don't think they should differentiate between the workers in the cities and the worker units. a good example of why it's wrong the way it is is that you can compleetly surround their city with units, but their workers are somehow at no risk at all working the outer ring of tiles and are somehow getting the resources back through your blockade to the city to build new defensive units...

 

[evrenkoc]

Some concecpt in the civ3 is not realistic. In PTW, Ottomans are scientific and industrious. I do not know about other civilizations but this is impossible for Ottomans I'm sure. Before I play PTW I thought that if there were Turks in the game they would certainly be militaristic and religious.
Anyway when I play a game I generally try to choose a civilization which is industrious and scientific, so Ottomans to be sci&ind. is good for me but not realistic.

 

[evrenkoc]

Some concecpt in the civ3 is not realistic. In PTW, Ottomans are scientific and industrious. I do not know about other civilizations but this is impossible for Ottomans I'm sure. Before I play PTW I thought that if there were Turks in the game they would certainly be militaristic and religious.
Anyway when I play a game I generally try to choose a civilization which is industrious and scientific, so Ottomans to be sci&ind. is good for me but not realistic.

 

[Suki]

and replace the curent static terrain with an advanced cellular automation that would simulate the evoloution of terrain over time.

 

[Sporty_Thievz]

Originally posted by CrONoS_QC
What it can help to make Civilization more fun... More social engineering... Introduce Religion or Social Ideal, cause, be a buddist nation it's completely different to be a Christian nation...
Can be a Idelism society with socialism value... in that case, People make more or less money, more or less patriotism..etc...

You can Create MTV to make other nation imbecile.. corrupting the youth of other nation Just Kidding...

For me, what we need in Civ4, More Social Engineering/social psychology pattern. Cause evolution it's not only wars,economics and build building to make people happier, Civ Series have just forget the human factor.

CrONoS_QC

Very true, Civ 3 is missing so much realism. I think the more realistic a game the better the game

 

[redhulkz]

in real life, US earn $$ by selling weapons to countries.
at the same time, military strength can be balanced to help weak nations against stronger ones.

we can bring it into Civ4 too.
we can sell like example 5 tanks for 300 gold to AI.

so that we can make use of our enemy's enemy to fight each other wif weapons suppied by us. that would be great!

 

[CrONoS_QC]

redhulkz:

YEAH!!! We got to have the ability to Give, Sell Millitary Units!
That's can be a wonderfull add-on

HAve a nice day!

 

[Sultan Bhargash]

Some ideas:

Customizable wonder abilities.
Civ specific improvements, technologies, government types.
Return of the spy unit with much earlier espionage options.
Insert your own photo as leader head made easy.
Choose terrain graphics style as you start game.
Wiser advisers.

 

[fret]

Eradicate the flat map in favour of a true globe.

Instead of current flat map make it a three dimensional planet. Have three zooms, when fully zoomed out the map/planet appears completely as a three dimensional globe that can be rotated on all axis to enable viewing of any area.
(of course, un-mapped areas would remain blacked out)
Then when you are viewing the desired area of the globe you zoom in to see a section of the globe similar in size to the current 'zoom-out' setting. Zooming in once more will take you to the current 'zoom-in' setting.


This would offer much more realism with regard to troop movement near the poles etc. It would also iron out possibly the biggest non-realism in the game, the world isnt flat!

I dont know if the current grid system would work on a globe map, hexagons might work, a combination of Octagons and Squares would definately produce a true globe but thats a differant beast altogether and would probably spoil the game.


Get rid of the flat map, thats my biggest wish

 

[Suki]

Originally posted by fret
Eradicate the flat map in favour of a true globe.

I dont know if the current grid system would work on a globe map, hexagons might work, a combination of Octagons and Squares would definately produce a true globe but thats a differant beast altogether and would probably spoil the game.

hexagons would work you'd just need 12 pentagons to cause the curvature. but even is we never get a round world I'd still prefer a hex grid because then each square you san go into can be treated the same, unlike when you hade diagonals.

 

[wtiberon]

How about having defined ethnic areas. What i mean is have a paticular region have a population of Turks or Italians or Germans. Civilizations have rarely been made up of a single ethnicity. Then as civilization overtakes this region it would have both this ethnicity and the original ethnicity of your homeland. Perhaps you could even choose whether to include them into your city or not. If you choose not allow them into your city they form barbarian tribes or guerilla armies. Then when nationality is discovered these regions will begin to try to form self governing countries and it will depend on your civs culture and power if your empire withstands it.

 

[Mawfia1]

I have seen some really neat ideas...here are some of mine.

First i am suprised that no one has mentioned the flight system that has recieved much criticism of late. At least the option of the old flight system where the airplane can move on tiles and perform flight operations but at the same time have a required number of turns before it either runs out of fuel or makes it to a friendly city. And then the option of the current flight system for those who like it the way it is now.

I love the idea of a 3d globe where there are poles and the ability to zoom in and out. Also for future expasion instead of the traditional space race...how about a sea race where on the same map suddenly theres the ability to start colonies in the ocean or have a 3d universe with maybe several globes, one being the traditional green earth, then the others would be random where you would have to advance in space technology to travel to the other globes in the same 3d universe with diverse tiles and stuff leading into SMAC.

As for the trading of resources I think that the ability to sell military technology and or units is a great idea. Allow a certain amount of production of a civ specific units to another civ in exchange for another tradable resource.

Also food i think deserves its own para here...maybe have a dynamic city radius, instead of your limited to 12 squares have it as your limited to the squares in your cultural influence. You could allow a city to attain food from a square not directly in its area but in its influence by say transport by some kinda of unit. Of course it would depend on the city's size, but its not uncommon for cities to attain food from places other than their immidiate area. Trading of food i feel is also a must, where food deficient civs can barter for food with other items. Also cities should be able to share their surplus with other cities in the civ...just thoughts of course.

As far as unique or ambiguous civ advances and improvements...i think for the beginning of the game is should be set like writing and religion and the traditional stuff...but as your start nearing the future or maybe even the late 1990s - 2000, then you should have random advancements and discoveries. Also as you near say the late 1900s and on then you should see the more customizable units and advances.

Another cool idea i think would make civ4 interesting would be impelementing a third party for commerce. For more elaboration i guess it would go like this...theres a free market (for this example ill call capitalism) and its is AI controlled and has the option every few hundred years of selecting a civ or city that has a high amount of commerce in comparison with the rest of the world. That third party (for example Microsoft) can then offer you or that economicly superior society or city the option of opening a business in that city at fixed sum of money per turn (which would be represented by adding another highrise to the city view) and in addition the amount of gold you make a turn would go up with the penalty of the a shared profit with Microsoft conducting business in your city(s)...but your citizens would be slightly happier because of sucha large coporation wanting to do business with your city and the extra money coming even with shared profit and the possibility or increasing the amount of offers from other large coporations to open up headquarters in your city. Of course there could also be a negative side effect like the corporation gets so much business that a monpoly comes about or a side effect of the coporation like pollution and over congested amount of population in the inner city...which would lead to a decrease in population.

It would take alot of programming but even in my experience with c++ i think its quite possible even if we dont see civ4 for another couple of years.

 

[Juize]

One idea i have always wanted to see is civilization changes. What do I mean? Well just as the Roman Empire became the Byzantine Empire so could one Civ become another. Reasons for this could if a Civ's capital is plagued by civil disorder for too many rounds or something along those lines. Also not all civilizations could appear at the same time. Have some civs (probably AI) appear later.

This is an idea where I agree. Then the specific attitudes would flip over time... Oh, yes.

 

[Pongui]

You have many great ideas, Suki, but this one's a real gem:

Originally posted by Suki
and replace the curent static terrain with an advanced cellular automation that would simulate the evoloution of terrain over time.

As in Sim-city.

I'd like to see larger, less initially-fertile maps. Civs would compete over a few restricted, prime areas. To get farmland, you'd have to clear jungle and forests. Certain technologies (Iron Working, Steam Power, etc.) obviously speed this. You'd have to develop agricultural technologies to better exploit the land. For example, the technology to produce more than one food unit on a Canadian prairie tile wouldn't come until around 1900 AD. Even later for most of Siberia. Huge areas of the map would be inhabited only sparsely by barbarians. The Earth map would be playable!

 

[MC4K]

a group of loyalist geurillas has taken to the hills around X, and look it even covers the geurilla effect for when you capture a city in civ 2, and of course you could choose to back or not the geurillas.

thats a brilliant idea. much more realistic.

i recon workers should be upgraded so they can terraform and make roads + irrigation faster. so its more realistic. in the modern era, we dont exactly have people wiv spades buliding out railways!

and i really think there should be some way to deal wiv the damage done by global warming. (like terraforming)

 

[Juize]

Strong penalties for armors when they're at any other terrain than plains, desert or grassland.
This would make some realistic infantry participiating in wars possible.
We need a Infantry unit with draft and low producing costs.

 

[Suki]

I was watching this documentry on the discovery channel the other day it was talking about china and the great wall and everything, and it mentions something I had never heard before that the chinese word for "Wall" is the same word they use for "City" this suggests something to me. much bigger than the obvious "the great wall should count as a wall in every city". That over time the two concepts grew together and that maybe the requirements for the wonders should be expanded to reflect the real depth that there is to the universe, so you don't have 14 out of 16 civs working on the library of alexandria at the same time...

here are some examples of what I mean

1) the great wall--> requires a certian number of turns accumulated with a wall in every one of your cities, from then every time you found a city it comes with a free wall.

2)the pyramids-->upgraded from the small wonder "tomb of kings" require a certian number of flood plains within your empire and around the city

3)SETI program-->requires the small wonder "internet" and some amount of reasearch labs.

4)the lighthouse--> maybe to the civ with the largest world map, or who has lost the most galley's at sea

5)hanging gardens--> they were built to make the king's new wife feel more at home, she was from a long way off, so it should help with assymulation and require that you have people to assymulate in the city where it's built

6) neuton's university-->upgraded from a normal university with the help of a great scientist

7)magellin's expidition-->goes to the first civ to send a unit all the way around the map

8)the Oracle-->cost reduced by 10 for every temple you have built

9)the statue of liberty must be given to you by someone else...

these are just examples and I could go on and on but you guys get the pictuer right?

you can have the same kind of fun with technology. I wouldn"t let a civ discover iron working without iron or hourse back riding without hourses, or advanced subatonic theory without building the Super Conducting Super Colider.

try this progression

when you start a game all the 4 legged mammals are represented on the map by generic "Game" +1 food to the square, discover domestication and then you differentiate the animals, and can then work at domesticating each type individually, the cows, bufflow and riendeer for food, the hourses, camels and elephants for work of riding.. fo course this being the practal application should cost production not science

which brings me to my next point
prototyping, sorry if everyone here hated SMAC but I've got it now: the first shot at anything should cost more maybe some percantage of the normal cost squared, think of this as blue printing, for buildings, unit equipment/training and complete units
you can trade blueprints just like techs. the techs repersent the theoretical ability to make something, the buleprints all the design and development. here are a few examples 1)the manhattan project, that is the work it takes to build your first neuclear warhead, anyone can do it but it's a lot easier just to trade for or steal it. 2)you may experience some dificulty putting together your first research lab but in the end you are rewarded because it produces 1 more culture for being the first. 3)maybe you've designed a good quality mortar but you still need to work out how it will work within an infantry regiment, a mech infantry regiment an armoured reginment, with paratroopers...it explaines everything see????

whay do you all think!?!?
it would really force people to play the civs with more character hun?
I think it's better this way.