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

[GeneralZIft]

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

I disagree, this would make the game harder to understand for newcomers and harder to pickup.
It would make the skills you learn in one Civ not be applicable in other Civs.
It would overcomplicate the game with excessive number of bonuses.
It would take away the amount of personalisation you can add to the Civ by "playing it your way" as opposed to playing it the way they want you to play it.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

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

I'd rather say that playing in different in-game situations should result in very different experiences.

You should not be able to play the same game with the same decisions starting in a central continental desert start as on a coastal river delta start.

And related to your statement, Egypt The Civ should not play the same way in its 'historical' desert-bordered riverine start as it might in an ahistorical deep forest edge-of-tundra start and surrounding terrain to expand into.

The in-game situation, surroundings and events should have a profound influence in how you play and the way in which you play each Civilization.

That means each designed Civilization in the game has to have options for dealing with a wide-ranging selection of potential in-game situations. The simple 'one-note' designs the game has presented too often in the past should not be viable except in a game with Historical Start Locations on a Historical Map.

 

[Hellenism Salesman]

As per usual, the other fanatics have already filled this thread with lots of great gameplay discussion, so I'll talk about something aesthetic instead.

My one change would be to make a style guide for leaders. Civ VI's case of stylistic inconsistency was so far along that it resulted in designs like Ghandi's belonging in the same game with Teddy. I feel like the styles didn't clash as much in the expansions and GS is the closest thing we got to a unified style between the leaders, but R&F brought along the grotesquely stylized governors too, which didn't help things. And for GS, while its leaders are closer to being stylistically coherent, it's still the distance from Oregon to Orlando. That's an upgrade over the distance from Boston to Budapest, it's still not remotely close.

I think having each leader be of a different style could actually be really cool if they (or at least their backgrounds) were based on the style of their civilization's art. This would be more research-intensive but it would be a cool visual signifier that each culture has a different interpretation of their leaders. For the people who prefer historically accurate designs, this would be heading in the complete opposite direction, but I think it could be good with proper execution, budget and resource-constraints notwithstanding

 

[criZp]

I agree with the thing being 1UPT. I don't think that limited stacking is an ideal solution either, although it would reduce the issue.

Unlimited units per tile with limited attacks per tile is the mechanic that would completely eliminate the logistical problem of 1UPT while maintaining the need to spread your units out in order to be effective, while also putting a limit on how big an advantage you can gain by going all-in on numerical superiority in a particular location of the map.

Either one attack per turn per tile, or one attack per turn per tile-to-tile (equivalent to six attacks per tile, each attack must be in a different direction from the others).

 

[aieeegrunt]

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.

Civ6 low move allowance, terrain costs and 1UPT means you have to solve a sliding tile puzzle whenever you move units

It’s tedious and totally ahistorical; the only time you had troop density like that was western Europe during the 20th century

The Consim scene back like 1970-90’s, Avalon Hill and SPI and whatnot spent several decades iterating to the optimum manageable size for a stack of units on a hex map and it was 3.

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.

In order to get a reasonably competent AI challenge you have to stick to the Basic Game with a few house rules:

No chops
Legendary starts
Abundant resources
You can’t take enemy cities, only give back with peace or raze

 

[SuperFly47]

I agree with the thing being 1UPT. I don't think that limited stacking is an ideal solution either, although it would reduce the issue.

Unlimited units per tile with limited attacks per tile is the mechanic that would completely eliminate the logistical problem of 1UPT while maintaining the need to spread your units out in order to be effective, while also putting a limit on how big an advantage you can gain by going all-in on numerical superiority in a particular location of the map.

Either one attack per turn per tile, or one attack per turn per tile-to-tile (equivalent to six attacks per tile, each attack must be in a different direction from the others).

I expect the developers will use Old World's combat system. I haven't played it, but from what I've read it is considered much better. I expect firaxis can use Old World's system in Civilization. Some adjustment might be needed and it would need to be expended to handle later era units, yet using Old World's system would save firaxis the time of starting from scratch to create a new system. Saving time means saving money. With a new combat system firaxis would have to hope people like it. Much simpler to just use Old World's combat system and then build upon it, see what issues people have with it and work to correct and improve it.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I expect the developers will use Old World's combat system. I haven't played it, but from what I've read it is considered much better. I expect firaxis can use Old World's system in Civilization. Some adjustment might be needed and it would need to be expended to handle later era units, yet using Old World's system would save firaxis the time of starting from scratch to create a new system. Saving time means saving money. With a new combat system firaxis would have to hope people like it. Much simpler to just use Old World's combat system and then build upon it, see what issues people have with it and work to correct and improve it.

Actually, the one thing they will not do is copy some other game's system. They may take aspects of it, or even aspects of several systems and try to 'meld' them, but no game as long-established as Civ will simply copy something straight out of some other game without adding something 'new' (or at least re-labeled) from their own team.

Our only hope is that whatever they wind up with is at least marginally better than what they've done before, and I think that means something other than the Stack of Doom, 1UPT, or Tactical Map systems seen in previous Civs or other games.

 

[GalleySlave]

To go back to the original question - it's hard to choose just one thing. For instance, the World Congress is truly terrible, but over time you learn how to game that system, and even if you incur negative effects, they only last 30 turns. The UI is awful, but mods can help with that. Trading between civs is so horribly imbalanced it almost feels like an exploit. Et al.

But the thing that I find most annoying on a regular basis is the Era Score system - in essentially every game I play, I either do things I wouldn't otherwise do at that time in order to hit the Golden Age threshhold (buying a galley in the Ancient, suz'ing a CS I don't really have any use for at the time, etc.), or delay doing things I would do because I've already passed the threshhold and want to save the Era Score for the next era; or both. Very immersion breaking.

"Captain, we've almost completed our circumnavigation of the globe! We will be the first to accomplish this glorious feat!"
"Heave to, men; we have to wait a little while."
"Why, Captain?"
"It's complicated."
"For how long, Captain?"
"Oh, just 25 years or so."
"...."

 

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

something to encourage more competition as the game goes on, like a musical chairs of sorts:

maybe you can found fewer and fewer cities as the game goes on. so by the late game, the only way you can acquire them is some sort of conflict with another player.

i.e. a cap on settlers per era.

 

[Marla_Singer]

something to encourage more competition as the game goes on, like a musical chairs of sorts:

maybe you can found fewer and fewer cities as the game goes on. so by the late game, the only way you can acquire them is some sort of conflict with another player.

i.e. a cap on settlers per era.

There should be a smarter way to discourage horizontal growth but it really needs being well-thought and play tested.

An idea would be that city maintenance would be determined by the number of moves required to go from the capital city to the city in question. At a certain point, it gets totally prohibitive and discourage the player from founding cities too far away. However, you could instead found a colony in remote locations.

A colony could be an entirely different civilization created from scratch, played and developped by the AI, not you. It would grow autonomously. Yet you could send other settlers to found other colonies and help your colonial civ to grow. You could also send soldiers to help defending it when it's still weak. The status of colony would mean that you have open access to its ressources at a very cheap cost, and it is forced to ally with you in case of war. After a certain level of development, the colony would be asking for its independence, and you would have to fight a war if you want to keep it as a colony.

The fact that maintenance would be determined by "moves" from capital city rather than pure distance would be simply to emulate development of railroad allowing the economy to integrate at a larger geographical scale. Therefore allowing countries to grow bigger after the industrial era.

 

[GalleySlave]

An idea would be that city maintenance would be determined by the number of moves required to go from the capital city to the city in question. At a certain point, it gets totally prohibitive and discourage the player from founding cities too far away.

That's essentially how corruption worked in Civ 3; I don't think you'll find many who are pining for a return of that mechanic.

Rather than discouraging wide play, I'd rather tall were a more viable option. Buffing specialists would help in that regard, I would think.

 

[Marla_Singer]

That's essentially how corruption worked in Civ 3; I don't think you'll find many who are pining for a return of that mechanic.

Rather than discouraging wide play, I'd rather tall were a more viable option. Buffing specialists would help in that regard, I would think.

I haven't played enough Civ5 and Civ6 to know how it works for those. In Civ4 there was a pretty smart system that was increasing the maintenance cost of all cities everytime you were founding a new one. Therefore you needed to improve your cities first before founding new ones otherwise costs would get prohibitive. That was a pretty smart way to incite for both wide and tall growth together without excessively punishing only new settlements (as was civ3 corruption), but in spreading the costs all accross the Empire. I was more thinking about something like that.

Yet after a certain level, let's say at Renaissance era, it became super easy to found cities everywhere in the world. They were yours, yet after a certain level of growth your overseas settlements eventually splitted as an independent civ. I liked that concept even though it should have been deepened a bit more. I don't believe the game should only be about ever growing bigger. There should be other ways to strengthen yourselves, particularly regarding diplomacy (vassals, colonies, religion, etc.) and economy (access to ressources, mainly).

 

[Chekko]

Combat mechanics. Feels like you don't have much control and you can't really surprise the enemy units either or anything like that. Not much strategy other than to fight over a river or on a hill/forest

 

[99-percent-sure]

something to encourage more competition as the game goes on, like a musical chairs of sorts:

maybe you can found fewer and fewer cities as the game goes on. so by the late game, the only way you can acquire them is some sort of conflict with another player.

i.e. a cap on settlers per era.

Hmm. Another way to do this might be to expand both the usable hex distance for each city along with the minimum distance for new city locations as the eras progress (or as technologies progress). For example, during the ancient and classical eras you can only use resources located up to three tiles away, but you can found cities closer together. In the medieval and renaissance eras, it's four tiles, and during/after the industrial era it's five. City limits would also expand faster and further during later eras to match these increased boundaries. (Five tiles in each direction might prove to be too much, but there might be some other way to make the cities bigger by era or tech threshold).

That tracks historically as well, because when transportation is limited it makes sense for cities to be located closer together, as traveling 20 or 30 kilometers is a pretty big deal, and a separate town is warranted. But as roads improve and transportation evolves, it only takes 20 minutes or so to travel those distances, so city limits expand because the amount of usable territory per city increases, and what used to be separate towns become boroughs within the same city. I haven't thought this through completely, so there may be good reasons why this wouldn't be workable, but it's a concept that might be useful. If you look at Civ IV, for example, city limits expand further and further as cities' cultural influence points reach certain thresholds. The workable tiles may not increase in that game (the "cross" is always the same size), but that could be modified in various ways.

 

[xehgre]

I am going to say Policy cards, but I could of easily pick Governors, District buildings and Specialist , or World Congress
1. they are unbalanced currently
2. I would like to see most of, if not all of them come with pros and cons. Some Examples
Conscription: Unit maintenance reduced by 1 gold per turn, Military units production cost increased by X% per turn
Natural Philosophy: +100% Campus district adjacency bonuses. Campus District maintenance increased by X gold per turn.

3. Remove the 'free' option to change policies every time you unlock a civic. Instead changing polices will cost Faith (I see faith as more of a Social, bureaucracy, or Political currency). To me this would get rid of some of the gamey feel of timing your civic research and policy changes.

 

[Quintillus]

Easy choice, get rid of 1 UPT. Single worst change ever introduced in the series (although global happiness in V vanilla is a very close second), it makes unit management a traffic-jam chore. I quit playing V due to it and have never bought VI (though I did take the free vanilla Epic offer, played two partial games but quit when the traffic management got too bad and went back to III/IV and Paradox games).

The only game I've seen where 1 UPT was kind of okay was Old World, but it uses a completely different system where units have enough movement that it's more like a hit-and-run combat system, and there is much more space between cities than in Civ.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

Lower the opportunity cost of preparing a settler to almost nothing. Or actually nothing. Or even negative.
Then you can shrink the value of having the city to the margin to match.

 

[VGhost]

Remove city states. There's no good reason for having artificially-limited AI powers and all the quests and stuff are just fiddly bits that don't add to the game.

 

[Zaarin]

Remove city states. There's no good reason for having artificially-limited AI powers and all the quests and stuff are just fiddly bits that don't add to the game.

I half agree insofar as I think that city-states should be replaced with minor civs that are limited to two or three cities with more diplomatic options than they have now, including the option to peacefully assimilate them (with the assimilator retaining their unique bonus).

Ara: History Untold is using a dynamic model for which civs become major and minor powers, with all civs starting the game on an equal footing, but I don't think that model would work well for Civ--while it might be interesting to see Egypt a full civ one game and a minor civ the next, minor civs are better used for representing civs that either don't need a full civ (Civ6 examples: Brunei, Wales), haven't gotten a full civ yet (Civ6 examples: Canada, Korea, Maya, Sweden, Netherlands, etc.--I'd also put Hittites, Elamites, Morocco, al-Andalus, and any number of civs that could claim Kabul here, among others), or lack the necessary details to become a full civ (Civ6 examples: Olmecs, Cahokia, Harappa, Nan Madol, Rapa Nui--Minoans really ought to be here, as well). I think Civ7 should especially focus on the first and last category; the more you give minor civs their own identity, the more it becomes awkward to constantly swap them in and out the way Civ6 did as new civs were added.

 

[pineappledan]

Civ 6 has a serious feature creep problem that makes every aspect of the game bloated. Unique great people and unique city state bonuses are emblematic of this. The civ 5 city state system was minimalistic and approachable. I think the Vox Populi mod for civ 5 strikes a good balance, with the simplicity of civ 5’s CS bonuses and an envoy system for diplomatic units, which is a big improvement over civ5’s instant buying of influence with gold.

So maybe that’s what I would change from civ 6 at least; get rid of the fiddly sub-bonuses like unique great people, unique City states, and umpteen billion adjacency bonuses for this that and the other thing.