If given only one aspect of Civ to change, what would you change?

[bene_legionary]

To be clear: only ONE aspect. You can't affect any other system, only interact with it. For example, to change the Loyalty system you can't change the Amenities system even though it affects the Loyalty system. However, what 'interact' and 'affect' means is up to you. You could stick Amenities and Loyalty together as long as this new system is self contained and has the same consequences of the existing systems.

It's only one aspect because I want people to focus on one part of Civ they particularly want to change, instead of the whole, which ends up becoming hard to follow and inconsistent.

 

[bene_legionary]

I should start. I'd go for technologies (not the Tech Tree). Technologies are divided into two types: regular old boring techs that give only bonuses, and Breakthrough techs, which disrupt the playing board more than usual but require a few normal techs to be researched and are more expensive than normal techs. Examples of a normal tech might be Paper, while a Breakthrough tech might be Printing. Breakthrough techs are highlighted (or are bigger than normal techs) to emphasise their importance; they might provide units, buildings, districts, etc., while normal techs only give bonuses such as extra yields, combat bonuses, trade routes, etc. Other mechanics might put a bigger distance between Breakthrough techs and normal techs, such as Breakthrough techs having the ability to spread to neighbouring civs or requiring adoption by all of your cities before the bonus can be fully given, while normal techs are instantly adopted by every city and are independently researched.

 

[civilizationfanatic2000]

the budget. give civ infinite budget

 

[Henri Christophe]

I should change the map. Nowadays CIvilization is playing ia a square map, but the Earth is a globe. The map should be round!

 

[aieeegrunt]

Stacking for sure. One unit of each class per hex. Would solve so many issues

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

This is a hard choice, because ideally I'd change almost everything.
But, if I had to narrow it to something that would make the most difference in how the game plays . . .

I'd change the entities on the map: Barbarian Camps, Tribal Huts, City States and Civilizations.

They produce an artificially static and puerile fantasy of history, and changing that would do more than any other single thing to change the game fundamentally.

EVERYBODY should start as roving hunter-gatherers. Everybody should have the option of 'settling down' and forming Settlements: less-than-city-sized permanent entities on the map. Some of those might turn out to be hostile and aggressive (Barbarians). Some could be at least neutral or even friendly trade partners (Tribal Huts, but permanent). Some could grow into City States or Minor Civs. Their opinion and actions vis-a-vis your Civ could and would change throughout the game, based on your own actions, heir actions, random events, rival Civ actions (diplomacy!) tc.

In short, the game would become dynamic instead of static, and the starting configuration of Civs and City States would keep changing throughout the game - expanding, contracting, changing from friendly and allied to barbarous or aggressive or even part of an Enemy's Empire.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

Leader Trading. I would completely take it out of the game. I don't enjoy it and feels to me like the fact that it's used as a work around for problems with other systems.

Trading resources would now be assigned to trade routes. For trading luxuries the game already assigns a value to having one more Amenities. For example a Happy city get +5% non-food yields, and each science is worth say 4 gold. Trading strategics would require other strategics or luxuries that the opponent doesn't have.

An exception would be for great works. But these would be temporarily exchanged when declaring friendship or open borders.

Breakthrough tech might be Printing.

I've thought that the game could use more "Manhattan Projects" where a project or wonder must be completed before the units or building are available.

Great question!

 

[Naokaukodem]

I would make the game playable without cities. It's more than just starting as hunter-gatherers, because you can eventually go back to hunting during a collapse. States have formed and collapsed many times during Antiquity or pre-Antiquity, particularly in Mesopotamia.

The only downside to my idea is that a collapse would sparse your population through the map : it could be advantageous in terms of exploration, but it would be a nightmare to reunite all your people in cities if you want to do so. Or maybe it could be sort of automatic ?

There's also a problem with likeliness to collapse versus the currency that prevents a collapse : should you have 0% chance per turn if enough, or still say 1% per turn no matter what ? Obviously, I would like the second, to make it a feature that you don't forget if playing good (a la loyalty system), but it might unplease some players, not to mention with the micromanagement nightmare stated above.

Last, I would like each population unit to have a promotion tree, thing is : it could be a micromanagement nightmare too, especially during a collapse when you have to find who is where, and where you want to send it. Unless each specialization would change the unit looking, and the icon too, like hunters being in brown (bow or pike), soldiers in red, administrators in white, etc.

I discussed this briefly in the link in my signature, so if you want to add up to it, feel free to visit it and post into it.

 

[GeneralZift]

Add a Cleopatra adult only scene

 

[MistroPain]

Hmmm, one thing is tough since like many I would like to see a lot of changes.

I guess I'd try to change certain elements of the game so they become independent of the player(s), including the Bot/AI major factions, where the player(s)/Bots influences rather than dictates that component nearly entirely. The elements that could do with this independence most would probably be trade and religion, and if I had to choose one I would start with religion. Ideally any such system would create tension, influencing things like diplomacy and giving reasons to wage war beyond just domination whilst also giving reasons to refrain from wars (for example waging war against the nation which has significantly more favour with the relgion that largely dominates your population).

 

[awesome]

For civ6? I’d probably just give city-states leaderheads

 

[dagriggstar]

I think the User Interface could be a lot better. Playing a game with friends without UI mods makes me realize how much I miss them. Also a good UI would actually make the game easier to learn for new players.

 

[Krajzen]

The thread asks you to change one thing, so I think we should imagine what single change would positively impact the game to the greatest extent.

There is no thing as important as changing 1UPT to something better. I have no idea what, but there has to be something better than either that or the misery of infinite doomstacks. It damages the entire game.

The gains we get from 1upt
- More engaging than brainless and heart less doomstacks
The price we pay for it
- Very long turn loading time for many of us (Humankind's almost instant turn loading was positively insane to my brain).
- As that system in civ context is a perfect nightmare for AI programming, we can't get decent AI with it without soul crushing turn times and great dev investments, so we will never get decent AI.
- Therefore AI terribly sucks at war, which makes warfare deeply unsatisfying.
- It comes with a metric ton of frustrating, tedious micro management which cannot be avoided. Don't even let me begin on the horror of having to invade country full of mountains, rivers, hills and jungles, with a traffic jam moving 1 tile per turn. I know it should be hard, but it should still be fun.
- It also removes need to seriously care about military defense, removing layer of a game.
- That negatively impacts the entire diplomacy system, because diplomacy is half empty without effective threat for human survival. If the main reason to avoid AI wars is not concern but just avoiding annoyance then the entire diplomacy falls flat.
- That negatively impacts economic balance, because you don't have to balance military and civilian spending, invest into militsry infrastructure etc.
- Why build navy if AI doesn't contest water?
- It makes many civ unique stuff go to waste because why bother about military superpowers if you can easily steamroll AIs with no bonuses anyway? A "variety of options to steamroll" is far less satisfying than "thank God Almighty for Cossacks, they saved Ukraine from Romanian invasion".
- How to world war if AI can barely comprehend the existence of airforce and navy? Nuclear weapons are just another way to kick crippled, sobbing AI lying on the ground so who cares anyway.
- It generally biases the entire game towards gamey meta - level favorisation of war as the most optima way to do any thing, because you can circumvent a ton of games systems by cheesing killing disproptional number of AI units with minimum force.

1Upt hurts the entire game. Just invent whatever better please.

Victoria3 has yet to be released but it had guts to do something revolutionary and abstract all warfare from point clicking individual units to abstracted frontlines which you manipulate and provide armies, supplies, generals etc. Stated goals include removing tedious micro, issues with AI and an abilit for the player to ignore diplomacy and economy (main focused of the game) in favor of cheesing AI with improbably underdog armies. Whether it work or not is yet to be seen, but I am fascinated by this revolutionary idea (for paradox games). Perhaps civ needs its own revolutionary paradigms shift once again, better than stacks and better than 1upt.

 

[aieeegrunt]

The thread asks you to change one thing, so I think we should imagine what single change would positively impact the game to the greatest extent.

There is no thing as important as changing 1UPT to something better. I have no idea what, but there has to be something better than either that or the misery of infinite doomstacks. It damages the entire game.

The gains we get from 1upt
- More engaging than brainless and heart less doomstacks
The price we pay for it
- Very long turn loading time for many of us (Humankind's almost instant turn loading was positively insane to my brain).
- As that system in civ context is a perfect nightmare for AI programming, we can't get decent AI with it without soul crushing turn times and great dev investments, so we will never get decent AI.
- Therefore AI terribly sucks at war, which makes warfare deeply unsatisfying.
- It comes with a metric ton of frustrating, tedious micro management which cannot be avoided. Don't even let me begin on the horror of having to invade country full of mountains, rivers, hills and jungles, with a traffic jam moving 1 tile per turn. I know it should be hard, but it should still be fun.
- It also removes need to seriously care about military defense, removing layer of a game.
- That negatively impacts the entire diplomacy system, because diplomacy is half empty without effective threat for human survival. If the main reason to avoid AI wars is not concern but just avoiding annoyance then the entire diplomacy falls flat.
- That negatively impacts economic balance, because you don't have to balance military and civilian spending, invest into militsry infrastructure etc.
- Why build navy if AI doesn't contest water?
- It makes many civ unique stuff go to waste because why bother about military superpowers if you can easily steamroll AIs with no bonuses anyway? A "variety of options to steamroll" is far less satisfying than "thank God Almighty for Cossacks, they saved Ukraine from Romanian invasion".
- How to world war if AI can barely comprehend the existence of airforce and navy? Nuclear weapons are just another way to kick crippled, sobbing AI lying on the ground so who cares anyway.
- It generally biases the entire game towards gamey meta - level favorisation of war as the most optima way to do any thing, because you can circumvent a ton of games systems by cheesing killing disproptional number of AI units with minimum force.

1Upt hurts the entire game. Just invent whatever better please.

Victoria3 has yet to be released but it had guts to do something revolutionary and abstract all warfare from point clicking individual units to abstracted frontlines which you manipulate and provide armies, supplies, generals etc. Stated goals include removing tedious micro, issues with AI and an abilit for the player to ignore diplomacy and economy (main focused of the game) in favor of cheesing AI with improbably underdog armies. Whether it work or not is yet to be seen, but I am fascinated by this revolutionary idea (for paradox games). Perhaps civ needs its own revolutionary paradigms shift once again, better than stacks and better than 1upt.

You can dramatically relieve the current agony of having to solve a sliding tile puzzle every time you move a unit by giving units more movement points and allowing some limited stacking, like say one unit of each class per hex.

 

[kaspergm]

There are two features of Civ6 where I think they got pretty much everything wrong, so my choice would have to be among either of those: World congress and Governors.

I'm going with Governors for this post, because I think it's pretty much universally agreed that World Congress in Civ6 is a disaster. The reason why I hate Governors so much is because they are:

• Extremely poorly balanced: Pingala vs.Victor, hello? Just to name the extremes. Result is, I end up going with the same Governors 99 % of my games: Always Pingala (up to Grants), always Amani (almost always up to Pupeteer), almost always Magnus (up to Provision), usually Moksha (up to Divine Architect), if I have spare promotions, Reyna and/or Liang will probably get one or two promotions.
• Serving two internally conflicting purposes: On one hand, they seem to be representing a specialization of a city, and on the other hand, many promotions encourage you to move them around; the latter also tying into my third objection:
• A nightmare of micromanagement: Taking 5 turns to establish in a new city is a pain, meaning you will spend as much time waiting for them to establish as you will actually benefit from their abilities.

For Civ7, I'm hoping for a more permanent governor system, where a governor is linked to a city permanently, representing an actual specialization of the city.

 

[GeneralZift]

There are two features of Civ6 where I think they got pretty much everything wrong, so my choice would have to be among either of those: World congress and Governors.

I'm going with Governors for this post, because I think it's pretty much universally agreed that World Congress in Civ6 is a disaster. The reason why I hate Governors so much is because they are:

• Extremely poorly balanced: Pingala vs.Victor, hello? Just to name the extremes. Result is, I end up going with the same Governors 99 % of my games: Always Pingala (up to Grants), always Amani (almost always up to Pupeteer), almost always Magnus (up to Provision), usually Moksha (up to Divine Architect), if I have spare promotions, Reyna and/or Liang will probably get one or two promotions.
• Serving two internally conflicting purposes: On one hand, they seem to be representing a specialization of a city, and on the other hand, many promotions encourage you to move them around; the latter also tying into my third objection:
• A nightmare of micromanagement: Taking 5 turns to establish in a new city is a pain, meaning you will spend as much time waiting for them to establish as you will actually benefit from their abilities.

For Civ7, I'm hoping for a more permanent governor system, where a governor is linked to a city permanently, representing an actual specialization of the city.

I really really rate this post, but I will add, I don't mind if they just straight up delete governors from the game...
You should be able to (are already able to?) specialise cities depending on the Districts and buildings you build. Governors seem unnecessary in this case.

 

[99-percent-sure]

As noted, the slowness of movement due to difficult terrain configurations is a PITA that sucks the fun out of many parts of the game. One easy change I'd like to see them make in Civ VII that would help alleviate this problem is to go back to the worker unit who can build ordinary roads from the very beginning of the game (say, after the wheel technology is researched). if they want to preserve the concept of build charges, fine, but give builders carte blanche to make era-appropriate roads without using one of their three (or 4-6 with bonuses) build charges. Waiting for the military engineer (and coal mining) to come along is ridiculous when it comes to simple thoroughfares. By the time I can make my own roads, I'm usually in endgame mode, and it's almost superfluous.

Alternatively, they could let builders construct roads using a fractional build charge (say, each builder can make 10 roads, along with the baseline three improvements). Traders could still build their own roads as well, if they want to preserve the trade route concept they currently have, which is reasonably interesting and challenging.

One other way to do it would be to give workers/builders lifespans instead of build charges. You can use your builder to make improvements, roads, etc. for, say, 20 or 30 turns, but then they retire.

 

[Marla_Singer]

1upt turned out as a game breaker to me and I couldn't get into Civ5 and later Civ6 because of it. 1upt supporters enjoy the fact "it's like playing chess", and that's exactly how I felt it and what repelled me. When I play civ, I want to simulate History, make the whole thing epic, believe in the story. And the more it goes, the more it feels like playing a board game.

 

[Xandinho]

AI or very complex mechanisms. It's totally impossible this game be challenging without a decent AI. Complex mechanisms can be nice for players, but if the AI can't handle them, maybe it would be better not to have them. I'm just tired of winning almost all matchs without any challenge, even in higher difficulties.

 

[TheSpaceCowboy]

At a very top level I'd add much greater asymmetry to the game. Playing as different civilizations should result in very different experiences