If you could improve Civ 4 in any way, how would you do it?

[Lemon Merchant]

Here's a thought experiment. In my line of work, I get to do a few of them.

Let's do this one for fun.

If you could improve Civ 4 in any way that you wished (gameplay, mechanics, graphics, anything at all). What would you do? And I don't mean by modding. If you were Firaxis and were doing a reboot of Civ 4, what would you correct/improve/retain?

I'm sure we all have good ideas. Let's see what we come up with, shall we?

I'll start:

1. I would have a mechanism where you can send food to a starving city
2. I would have a requirement that stacks in the field needed logistical supply to be at full strength

There's two. Let fly!

 

[georgjorge]

Your second proposal sounds rather good.

1. Rework culture so that limited wars (without wiping out a civ entirely) are actually possible in the ADs without getting completely culture-swamped

2. Completely rework AI behaviour - declaration of wars, build choices, tech choices, stack composition - to not have it do so many stupid things

 

[Rusten]

First things that come to mind:

Rework Apostolic Palace.
Rework espionage.

Both have severe flaws. They really should've done something about it before abandoning the game.

 

[Lennier]

Fix the bug where workers build a farm on a tile, then replace it with a cottage, then replace the cottage, repeat until city is conquered.

 

[Robo-Star]

If you could improve Civ 4 in any way that you wished (gameplay, mechanics, graphics, anything at all). What would you do? And I don't mean by modding. If you were Firaxis and were doing a reboot of Civ 4, what would you correct/improve/retain?

Have a 2D version option so it runs on older comps.

 

[civfanchambers]

Bring back a feature from civ 3 where you could build a colony on top of a resource to gain access to it without needing a city. It annoys me to no end seeing a land resource in horrible terrain where no city should ever be built. Give me the ability to establish an outpost on the resource with some form of maintenance cost and let me have it without a city in a stupid location.

 

[VCrakeV]

^this



Future era, expanded and improved civic system (something like VI lol), stack limits, relevant defense buildings (like modern fortresses, future domes)... I could think of a lot. Doing what little I can with xml.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Here's a thought experiment. In my line of work, I get to do a few of them.

Let's do this one for fun.

If you could improve Civ 4 in any way that you wished (gameplay, mechanics, graphics, anything at all). What would you do? And I don't mean by modding. If you were Firaxis and were doing a reboot of Civ 4, what would you correct/improve/retain?

I'm sure we all have good ideas. Let's see what we come up with, shall we?

I'll start:

1. I would have a mechanism where you can send food to a starving city
2. I would have a requirement that stacks in the field needed logistical supply to be at full strength

There's two. Let fly!

The bold would be my number one choice, a mechanic similar to the supply convoy units from SMAC.

Second would be entertainers, specialists that add to the happy cap.

Third would be a stack limit based on unit type.

 

[Fippy]

I would think about ways of making the late game more interesting, feels like there are too many techs for what they offer. I never had any desire for space victories, cos it's endless teching and building a few parts.

I would also nerf slavery, or put it behind a more expensive tech than BW.

Balancing traits would also be good, esp adding benefits for Protective.

Choosing starting techs, so Civs are more equal.

Removing cease fire, cos it's easily tricking AIs.
Also away with 10 turns peace for succesful begs

 

[Staler87]

Hexes. The square system is annoying and hexes are probably the one non-controversial and really good decision civ V made.

 

[Jivilov]

1. No cultural defenses. Revert to the system in 3 where city size affected defensive bonuses.
2. No suicide siege. Revert to a modified 3 so that barrage units could inflict collateral damage on more than one enemy unit when attacking, while being defenseless themselves without regular escort.
3. Allow mounted units retreat chances while defending outside cities, also as in 3.

 

[vincentz]

Hexes. The square system is annoying and hexes are probably the one non-controversial and really good decision civ V made.

I really disagree with this. Sure, hexes are fine for tactical games like panzer general, but take a look at a world map, or in fact pretty much any map, take a look at a compass, take a look on the numpad.
The biggest mistake civ 5 did was trying to be a tactical combat game with hexes and 1upt. But since tactical wargames have movements ranging from 2-8 and similar attack ranges it is possible to avoid a carpet of death and the hassle it brings, most units in civ 5 have 1-2 movement (right?) and it therefore quickly feels like playing chess with pawns only.

Things I would change in civ 4 bts:

Combat
Stacks, but limited
#Soldiers, not just training a unit but training x soldiers of x type.
Minigame when attacking (the stacks are spread out on a zoomed map, and tactical strategies are in play. Can't remember games doing like this, but not TW style. HOMM?

Cities
A limited form of simcity instead of the 100 mile cities that 6 sounds like, it will be 1 tile cities.
These citymaps are the ones being used when being attacked, so defense placements etc are important. There should of course be a lot of variation in map, so they not look identical

Much more diplomatic choices.

 

[Playsoneasy]

I would introduce a separate civics tree that runs parallel to the tech tree - very much like in Civ 5 in fact.

Religion would also work more like in Civ 5, with a Civ choosing an initial pantheon of beliefs that eventually evolves into a fully fledged religion.

 

[Staler87]

I really disagree with this. Sure, hexes are fine for tactical games like panzer general, but take a look at a world map, or in fact pretty much any map, take a look at a compass, take a look on the numpad.
The biggest mistake civ 5 did was trying to be a tactical combat game with hexes and 1upt. But since tactical wargames have movements ranging from 2-8 and similar attack ranges it is possible to avoid a carpet of death and the hassle it brings, most units in civ 5 have 1-2 movement (right?) and it therefore quickly feels like playing chess with pawns only.

Disregard civ V for a moment. Objectively, I can't see how hexes are worse are worse. In squares you get extra movement for going diagonally and in hexes everyone will move the same distance (unless the units goes in circles) if they have the same movement cost.

Why a compass? It is a circle?

A world map is a square but this actually creates inaccuracies due to the earth being a circle. The square map thing is a tradition in map-making the worked with smaller scale maps but skews a lot of things with full scale maps.

Are you actually using computer keys as an argument for what tile should be used in a civ game? I'm sorry but that just seems a little ridiculous to me.

Just because a game has hexes doesn't mean it is a tactical combat game (although hexes work very well for this kind of game) it just means that it cares about fair movement distances rather than moving diagonally to 'jump' tiles.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Computer keys are the shortcuts for controlling movement, so the argument is far from ridiculous.

 

[Staler87]

Who actually double clicks there stack and then clicks on the numpad instead of clicking on the tile next to the one they just double clicked on. That just isn't convenient.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I use the mouse for everything myself, but I know a guy who hardly ever touches the mouse. There's some keystroke he uses instead of that double click, but I couldn't tell you what it is.

 

[MyOtherName]

Alt-G, I think.

Why do people think hexes are more "fair"? A hex grid may be closer to 'realism' in that it better approximates the Euclidean distance of the real world (but a hex grid still has its 6 privileged directions), but I'm not sure I've ever seen a serious argument that the affect on distances makes for a better game in any way.

The main thing hexes do is reduce the number of tiles adjacent to any particular tile, or more generally, how many tiles exist within a particular distance.

(a square grid without diagonal movement reduces that number even further)

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

I couldn't care less about hexes vs tiles to be honest, it's such a completely superficial matter.

Boy where do I start? Lets just take the Legends of Revolution mod as a baseline and go from there. Wealth, Research, Culture and Failgold should all be less efficient, only converting 50% of production to make buildings more attractive. Apart from increasing defenses and expanding your borders culture should have additional effects such as more happiness and bonuses to great people birth rate and trade route yield. Infinite stacking of everything is good and simple, however there should be a combat penalty that scales with the amount of units you have on the same tile, so the more units are on the same tile the worse they fight. Siege Weapons should range bombard instead of attacking directly. Ships should also be able to range attack. There should be a mine field building or improvement that helps cities defend better against naval invasion somehow. There should be a way to get rid of workers without deleting them, like making cottages consume them or being able to use them as mini Great Engineers. I want the civics roster reworked like I described in the Communism in Civ4 thread. In addition to or instead of the current trade route system I would also like Civ5's trade route system, and while I'm at it Civ5's religion mechanics too.

 

[Staler87]

Alt-G, I think.

Why do people think hexes are more "fair"? A hex grid may be closer to 'realism' in that it better approximates the Euclidean distance of the real world (but a hex grid still has its 6 privileged directions), but I'm not sure I've ever seen a serious argument that the affect on distances makes for a better game in any way.

The main thing hexes do is reduce the number of tiles adjacent to any particular tile, or more generally, how many tiles exist within a particular distance.

(a square grid without diagonal movement reduces that number even further)

I'm not saying its a big improvement, but it is an improvement nonetheless.