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

[Lemon Merchant]

I'm all about cookies... Is it going to be a new BUG option Lemon?

Oh jeez. I get enough flak for putting the female units into BAT and Better BAT AI. If I put a cookie option in BUG, I'd get lynched. They would be led by EmperorFool and ruff.

Nice idea though.

 

[Lexicus]

Oh jeez. I get enough flak for putting the female units into BAT and Better BAT AI. If I put a cookie option in BUG, I'd get lynched. They would be led by EmperorFool and ruff.

Nice idea though.

Female units? What heresy is this? We don't need this kind of affirmative action from ********s!

 

[Drakarska]

Oh jeez. I get enough flak for putting the female units into BAT and Better BAT AI. If I put a cookie option in BUG, I'd get lynched. They would be led by EmperorFool and ruff.

Nice idea though.

Oh, I don't know there LM. Personally, I wouldn't mind having just 1 cookiepult in my stack as I'm taking a city. The sheer amount of humor as Gandhi is whining at you for being a warmonger would be epic.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Female units? What heresy is this? We don't need this kind of affirmative action from ********s!

Just a little dose of Estrogen in the Corporate Executives and Missionaries. I left the fighting units alone. I don't believe in affirmative action.

Oh, I don't know there LM. Personally, I wouldn't mind having just 1 cookiepult in my stack as I'm taking a city. The sheer amount of humor as Gandhi is whining at you for being a warmonger would be epic.

Now, a cookiepult... Hmmmm. What a great idea for a unit.... I'll have to get the unit workshop at Lemon Labs working on that full time.

 

[Drakarska]

Happy to help Ma'am, just happy to help

 

[rah]

Yeah, you could beat deity on your second game or civ II. Unlike IV where you actually need to learn a few things first.
Of for some of us, you don't beat it at the level all the time.

 

[kingbeef]

1) Make it so that your spies in rival territory that you have open borders with don't get caught, unless they attempt and fail to run an active mission. It always struck me as a bit odd that you lose a unit and get a negative diplo modifier for doing absolutely nothing wrong.

2) Exaggerate the rock, paper, scissors element of combat, so that a combined arms force is important, and stacking or not is a real consideration. As it stands, spamming a certain unit depending on era is all that matters. I want siege that does huge collateral to units in a single tile, Changes to, and removal of, some units to give a better sense of balance. I'd also like to see a system where cavalry can choose which unit in a stack to attack, so that they are an important choice for countering siege. This could be balanced by forcing cavalry to fight fortified defenders first. It would require you to control the land adjacent to cities in order to safely move siege into place, rather then the steamrolling stacks we have now, and it gives an outnumbered defender a chance to defeat a larger force through clever play.

3) Remove financial as a trait.

4) Make buildings a viable option. Obviously there are a lot of changes required for this, a lot of which have already been mentioned, and each individual building would need separate balancing.

5) Make unit upgrading cheaper, and unit maintenance more expensive, to encourage a standing army, rather than seeing cities defended by cavemen in later eras.

6) Show more information that was hidden in the regular game. I know BUG solves some of this, but it would be great to see city maintenance rates, what mood rivals won't declare war at, and other very important elements in game, instead of having to check reference charts.

7) Tone down slavery, which is probably the single biggest game breaking mechanic. This would have to be coupled with better AI and removal of AI bonuses, or better yields from tile improvements in order to make higher difficulties still viable. It would be easy enough to tone down slavery, just reduce the number of hammers received per pop sacrificed.

 

[Fippy]

I would bring the funny advisors from Civ2 into 4

After playing around with 2 a bit, i must say it's still such an incredibly entertaining game.
Old graphics are nostalgic, doesn't matter much for me.

 

[Lennier]

I concur, noble leader.

Civ II did have some bells and whistles that made it immersive and entertaining. The wonder movies were great too, even though they were in a small format.

 

[civvver]

To borrow a couple things from 5, make it so having multiple of the same resource has some positive impact. Let you build troops faster or something that require that resources, or having more luxuries makes them more effective. I'm not really into limiting and penalties so I dislike the idea that one iron only supports 7 units or whatever. I just think there should be something before corporations that makes having more than one of a resource valuable, other than trading it around.

Bring back caravans from civ2. So instead of just building wealth or science, cities could build caravans and do mini trade missions for gold with other civs. Also let caravans transfer food between your cities just like civ2. Then you could take fishing villages with no production and transfer all their food to mountain cities with tons of production and no food.

First strikes work pretty well for archery and gun units but for siege weapons like catapults and trebuchets I think they should have a ranged attack but it should be weaker like not cause collateral damage or something.

 

[meatball20]

Why is the plus hammer on stone copper horse iron note added to other cities through a city connection trade?

 

[Lennier]

Because the hammer bonus goes with the tile. Just like the food bonus from corn only goes to the city working the corn tile.

 

[Tatran]

After playing around with 2 a bit, i must say it's still such an incredibly entertaining game.

Airbases on hills are amazing. (3 food + 4 shields, something I had to discover 20 years later.)

- Spies should only get caught when doing an action.
- No more auto-voting for the master by vassals.
- Rework of the promotion system.
- Only allow to found 1 religion.

 

[Ricci]

Airbases on hills are amazing. (3 food + 4 shields, something I had to discover 20 years later.)

- Spies should only get caught when doing an action.
- No more auto-voting for the master by vassals.
- Rework of the promotion system.
- Only allow to found 1 religion.

- This way your entire territory could be revealed with no contention from your side. Not cool
- Nice, they shoul have some mild moddifier towards their master, think would make the best diplomatically. There is one exception to the automatic voting, I believe towards the diplo win it is.
- The siege "suicidal" issue should be addressed, somehow tweaking some promos I guess. Don´t see any other major issue for a complete revamp though.
- This would be a completely unfun, unrealistic, degrading, Shafer's hard limiting atrocity. The complete opposite of what makes Civ great.

EDIT: the automatic voting from vassals towards masters is set for the election of AP and UN residents, I learned resolutions voting (at least with UN) are free for vassals...

 

[Ricci]

To borrow a couple things from 5, make it so having multiple of the same resource has some positive impact. Let you build troops faster or something that require that resources, or having more luxuries makes them more effective. I'm not really into limiting and penalties so I dislike the idea that one iron only supports 7 units or whatever. I just think there should be something before corporations that makes having more than one of a resource valuable, other than trading it around.

... ...

Something of the sort occurred to me. Making units using the resource increasingly cheaper the more you have. Having one instance, normal price; having two: 5% cheaper for every new unit; with three, 3% cheaper, or the sort. Small modiffiers, which, moreover, fade away the more instances you control. Thus, controling a second instance of the resource would be more meaningful than a third one, etc. Better idea which, nevertheless, has issues from the go, as various units using the same resource would generate different discounts depending on the build order, to name one; not cool. Needs proper and thorough thinking to get to it clean and bug/exploit free.

Another notion would be allowing more cities to build the resource needing units simultaneously. Not so much into the ongoing game mechanics -which leads to unforseen issues-, but still another approach.