Improvements for Civ 4

[XGustaX]

Just as the title suggests, what do you want the devs to patch or change in for Civ 4 in the next expansion?


Here are some Ideas from me:

These could easily be fixed by a patch:

-Make Nukes actually destroy cities under a certain population.

-Make guided missles destroy buildings in cities.

- Change "Native America" to Lakota Native Americans were the people in the Americas (Both North and South America) previous to the European Arrival, everyone not just from the USA. (Its odd they put that in the first place because when you read the civolopedia entry for them it even talks about how the Mayans were the only Native Americas to develope a written language.)


These ideas could be in the next Expansion pack:

-Add New Leaders to Civ's that have only one.

-Add A Immigration system to recreate what happened in the USA.

What are your ideas?

 

[d.c.]

my first post!

Been playing civ iv for most of the year, never played any civ games before then. It's just occurred to me that a couple of things could be adopted:

- war weariness, increased if you declare war, decreased if it's been declared on you.
- aircraft carriers: strength seems to be out of proportion to other units. I think they should be able to carry at least 6 jet fighters. Also when a jet is patrolling the visible area should be doubled or tripled, after all the point of flying patrol is to spot theats before they enter within striking distance.
- if the AI knows you've bribed another civ into declaring war or ceasing trade, then you should be able to see that as well.
- the master should be able to cancel a war time capitulation after a period of time.
- sam infantry unit replaced with mobile aa rocket launcher str 25 or thereabouts.

 

[bestbrian]

Just off the top of my head...
1. Be able to acquire techs from conquered civilizations. I wipe you out, I get your stuff, case closed.
2. Upgrade Workers to Engineers with the ability to transform map tiles into different terrain types (with discovery of Engineering?). If I can build a levee, let me reclaim a desert or polder the sea.
3. Leonardo's Workshop Wonder: all units upgrade for free.
4. Units should have Zones of Control
5. Keep religions; just eliminate the names. Thus, "Polytheism first to discover get's to found a religion" and the player has the option to name it whatever he/she wants. The religious aspect of the game is nifty and I think it works well, but alot of people seem to have a hard time bending their heads around situations like "Stalin founds Islam". Besides, I want my civ to worship the ALMIGHTY BRIAN and spread BRIANISM far and wide; that would be fun.
6. When designing the next gen, don't get bogged down in the tactical aspects of the game, like implementing micro-managing battle screens and such not. Civ is played on a larger scale.
7. A "Move All Units Same Type" function for air units. It's a drag individually rebasing 20 bombers to keep up with an advance.

Most of these things were present in Civ II (at least in the PS One version)and seemed to work fine.

 

[Antilogic]

Just as the title suggests, what do you want the devs to patch or change in for Civ 4 in the next expansion?


Here are some Ideas from me:

These could easily be fixed by a patch:

-Make Nukes actually destroy cities under a certain population.

-Make guided missles destroy buildings in cities.

- Change "Native America" to Lakota Native Americans were the people in the Americas (Both North and South America) previous to the European Arrival, everyone not just from the USA. (Its odd they put that in the first place because when you read the civolopedia entry for them it even talks about how the Mayans were the only Native Americas to develope a written language.)


These ideas could be in the next Expansion pack:

-Add New Leaders to Civ's that have only one.

-Add A Immigration system to recreate what happened in the USA.

What are your ideas?

I've complained about the Native America thing for awhile now, so I won't scream myself hoarse at the sheer stupidity of including two whole continents of people overlapping severely with other, contemporary Civs when there are more specific Civilizations to pick. But I agree.

Several new leaders and maybe 1-3 Civs are on my wish list. They always are.

There are events in the game already that mimic immigration, so I don't think it's necessary to add a redundant game system. Just build your culture, and immigrants will come to your cities.

- war weariness, increased if you declare war, decreased if it's been declared on you.

This is already implemented in the war weariness system. Aggressors suffer more heavily than defenders.

- aircraft carriers: strength seems to be out of proportion to other units. I think they should be able to carry at least 6 jet fighters. Also when a jet is patrolling the visible area should be doubled or tripled, after all the point of flying patrol is to spot theats before they enter within striking distance.

I agree the capacity of an aircraft carrier should be at least 4 (the number that any other airbase can contain), but there are recon missions you can send your jets on to figure out where the enemy fleets are.

- sam infantry unit replaced with mobile aa rocket launcher str 25 or thereabouts.

There is a mobile SAM unit upgrade to SAM infantry, if that's what you mean. It's in BtS.

Just off the top of my head...
1. Be able to acquire techs from conquered civilizations. I wipe you out, I get your stuff, case closed.
2. Upgrade Workers to Engineers with the ability to transform map tiles into different terrain types (with discovery of Engineering?). If I can build a levee, let me reclaim a desert or polder the sea.
3. Leonardo's Workshop Wonder: all units upgrade for free.
4. Units should have Zones of Control
5. Keep religions; just eliminate the names. Thus, "Polytheism first to discover get's to found a religion" and the player has the option to name it whatever he/she wants. The religious aspect of the game is nifty and I think it works well, but alot of people seem to have a hard time bending their heads around situations like "Stalin founds Islam". Besides, I want my civ to worship the ALMIGHTY BRIAN and spread BRIANISM far and wide; that would be fun.
6. When designing the next gen, don't get bogged down in the tactical aspects of the game, like implementing micro-managing battle screens and such not. Civ is played on a larger scale.
7. A "Move All Units Same Type" function for air units. It's a drag individually rebasing 20 bombers to keep up with an advance.

Most of these things were present in Civ II (at least in the PS One version)and seemed to work fine.

I agree with the principle of (1) that some form of tech transfer should occur when you take cities of an opposing civilization...maybe not everything, but at least a couple.

I don't care for (2) at all. That's one feature of Civ2 that I absolutely hated. Civ3 and Civ4 did much better in that regard.

(3) I have Leonardo's Workshop on my wish list reducing upgrade costs by 33%. Civ2 showed the free upgrades to be brokenly powerful, especially with the amassed warriors to muskets trick.

(4) No, they really shouldn't. Think of the scale of the game, where you have a relatively small number of tiles representing the entire globe. Even neighboring tiles could represent the distance of well over a hundred miles unless you are playing on the largest map size. And, it's not like my bows and arrows are going to cause any damage to you if you are over 100 miles away. If anything, only modern units could, reasonably, have zones of control.

(5) So long as it keeps the names as defaults (just like how cities work), then I won't care. But I like have the historically correct religions in the game.

(6) I agree whole-heartedly.

(7) I believe you can already rebase multiple aircraft at once...simply shift-click or control-click a group of aircraft, and then hit the rebase button. I could have sworn I have done this myself a number of times. And at most you are moving 8 air units to any particular city.

 

[bestbrian]

Thanks for the response, Antilogic. Just a few questions/comments:

I like your Leonardo's Workshop idea to reduce upgrade costs. I didn't know about the warrior to muskets trick; I just hated building new units all the time.

Why am I moving only 8 air units at most to any particular city? I've had well over twenty air units stacked in cities before.

I get around the terraforming thing by making my own rule. After Biology, I can park a worker on a "waste" tile and wait ten turns. After that, WB it to grassland. I just refuse to accept that I can build a space elevator and research umpteen future techs, but still can't irrigate a desert. However, I know what you mean about the CIv II system where you could create a whole range of hills and turn a marginal city into a phenomenal production city. That was a bit much.

I'd also clean up some of the oversights in the tech tree. SS without flight? That's silly. And Mech Inf without oil? Ditto.

And a nice idea to reclaim is the old Offshore Platform that increased shield production in water tiles. Maybe something like a Wave Energy plant that would add a hammer per worked water tile? IDK, but something to increase the output of coastal/island cities would be nice.

Happy Civing!

I forgot ZOCS. I hadn't thought about map sizes smaller than huge, and I see your point. It's just very annoying to have to place a unit on every tile in an uninterrupted line to build a "wall" to prevent the AI just waltzing between them. You make a good point about the tile sizes, but when you consider turn lengths I think the guy with the bow could close a gap of a 100 miles given 100 years to make the trip. Perhaps an idea would be to give forts ZOCS? That would make them more useful and represent their use as border barriers with constant scouting and patrolling to detect and intercept forces moving through their perimeters.

 

[deanej]

The 8 air units was added in BTS. It's only 4 without an airport.

As for terraforming, given that a tiles is 100-500 miles long, desert to grassland may be too much at that stage - a smaller effect or at some future tech would balance this out.

 

[bestbrian]

8? Dude, I'm sure that in Warlords I've stacked ALOT more than 8 bombers in a city whether there was an airport or not; definitely more than 4

A 100 x 100 tile is only 10,000 square miles which is roughly the size of the Negev Desert in Israel or Adirondack Park in New York State (not that it's a desert, but just for size comparison). The Sahara is 3.5 million square miles. Now, with all the desert reclamation in the Mideast and the extensive farms the Soviets carved out of their central deserts, as but two examples, I don't think we're speaking of something unreasonable.

EDIT: I goofed when I first read your post. You're saying that the 8 air unit limit was implemented in BTS. Gotcha, my bad.

 

[Antilogic]

Thanks for the response, Antilogic. Just a few questions/comments:

I like your Leonardo's Workshop idea to reduce upgrade costs. I didn't know about the warrior to muskets trick; I just hated building new units all the time.

Why am I moving only 8 air units at most to any particular city? I've had well over twenty air units stacked in cities before.

I get around the terraforming thing by making my own rule. After Biology, I can park a worker on a "waste" tile and wait ten turns. After that, WB it to grassland. I just refuse to accept that I can build a space elevator and research umpteen future techs, but still can't irrigate a desert. However, I know what you mean about the CIv II system where you could create a whole range of hills and turn a marginal city into a phenomenal production city. That was a bit much.

I'd also clean up some of the oversights in the tech tree. SS without flight? That's silly. And Mech Inf without oil? Ditto.

And a nice idea to reclaim is the old Offshore Platform that increased shield production in water tiles. Maybe something like a Wave Energy plant that would add a hammer per worked water tile? IDK, but something to increase the output of coastal/island cities would be nice.

Happy Civing!

I forgot ZOCS. I hadn't thought about map sizes smaller than huge, and I see your point. It's just very annoying to have to place a unit on every tile in an uninterrupted line to build a "wall" to prevent the AI just waltzing between them. You make a good point about the tile sizes, but when you consider turn lengths I think the guy with the bow could close a gap of a 100 miles given 100 years to make the trip. Perhaps an idea would be to give forts ZOCS? That would make them more useful and represent their use as border barriers with constant scouting and patrolling to detect and intercept forces moving through their perimeters.

The concept of restricting air units per city was introduced in BtS. Before, in Vanilla and Warlords, you could have unlimited numbers. Also, you can now place up to 4 air units in a fort, so you have reasons to build forts along your borders (as airbases as well as defensive posts).

Giving the ability to irrigate a relatively low value area could be a modern tech (maybe after Genetics?). The only thing I don't like about your house rule is that the AI probably can't use it.

The spaceship without flight thing is the result of going through rocketry. Realistically, early spaceships (and successful spaceships...I don't know if any space-planes have ever succeeded) were rocket-launched...but it's still iffy. I might agree with you there.

The Moai Statues does provide extra production in water tiles, but only in a single city.

Also, you can't prevent the AI from moving unless you are at war with them--you simply coexist in the tile. Also, if this did work, you could do what I did in Civ3, and simply move a group of 3 units that prevent movement in a specific direction by adjusting it every time. Although, I'm not exactly sure what you mean here...could you clarify?

 

[bestbrian]

As far as restricting movement, I was thinking of a wartime or barbarian situation. In actuality, the only difference in giving a fort a zoc is one of cost and scale. Say you want to build a defensive line to deter an attack at a certain point and channel it someplace else, and for the sake of argument that this line is 10 tiles long. To fill in all the gaps so the AI can't just walk between your units and force your defenders to become attackers you have to place units in all ten tiles. Currently, you can then choose to build 10 forts and give each unit the defensive bonus. If forts had a zoc you could reduce your manpower cost by half because you'd only have to fortify 5 tiles (the zoc thus preventing the AI from "shooting the gaps"). The only real benefit (other than the defensive bonus) is the manpower savings of using fortifications instead of troops (which seems pretty accurate to me in reflecting the value of field fortifications). You've persuaded me to your point of view regarding individual unit zocs, but I think zocs for forts is beneficial/desirable/accurate/gamable.

Yeah, my "house rule" only benefits me and not the AI, but tough on them. When Monty buys the game he can make the rules.

 

[KaiserElectric]

w00t 1st post

I love the idea of an immigration system. It could be a great way to increase your population or take over an enemy city peacefully. The more powerful nukes are a good idea as well.

 

[AngryBlackGuy]

Before you can negotiate and trade with a civ, you should have to build a physical diplomat unit and establish an embassy in that civ's capital, like you had to do in civ1 and civ2. I also miss the fact that you could trade contact information in civ3. Bring these two features back!

 

[PimpyMicPimp]

More modern leaders and more distinct personalities wold make me happy.

I'm not so concerned about overlapping traits, I want more modern leaders (and Civs for that matter) and perhaps some leaders could use a more distinct personality.

I know some people hate the idea of more civs, but the world is a big place. More civs, hopefully more that arn't located in Europe, would make it that much more immersive to me. Come on, we all want Tommy Douglas of the Canadian Empire

MoreleadersforJapantoopleasekthanx

 

[Antilogic]

More modern leaders and more distinct personalities wold make me happy...

Come on, we all want Tommy Douglas of the Canadian Empire

No, and not really. Modern leaders are way too overrated, and there are plenty of great, ancient leaders to select from who are far more deserving. I swear, if somebody posts the name of a particular 20th century Spanish fascist again, I'm going to throw a conniption.

I would rather have the Hittites and Israel before Canada. And Akkad led by Sargon, literally the first real emperor in recorded history (methinks, at least in the Middle East).

 

[Spitefire]

How about Customizable goverments and Customizable leaders/Civilizations (there already is unrestricted leaders) aswell as Customizable Corprations (Allowing the player to choose what this buissness produces and useing what resources Food hammers or commerces so long as it is under control)
An example for custom corps.

I set up my first corp (or guild if it is pre industrial) I name it (Fast Food R US) just for shits and giggles and because i want this corp to make food i pick out cows as the first resource i want it to use and i have 5 cow plots now i choose how many at this time i want it to use lets say 4 out of 5 for the time being so now i have this corp makeing extra food for all the citys it sits in but lets say i want this corp to make more food and i also have pigs in my land say about 3 plots of them so i take my corp and choose to expand it with the expantion button now if i want this order to expand to be done i have to pay a set amount of money right on the spot (mebey 5000 gold just as an example) and have to confirm the maintiance increase for useing the pigs im about to let it have.

Or mebey for an even higher starting price and fees i want this corp to one day be an all purpose mega monopoly rather then starting multiple corps to handle all the diffrant resources so i slowly expand it into useing stratigic resources to boost hammer income and then happy resources to boost coin generation ability.

 

[bestbrian]

And Akkad led by Sargon, literally the first real emperor in recorded history (methinks, at least in the Middle East).

I'm not sure we really need any new civs, but I agree with Antilogic, if there are going to be any start with Sargon/Akkad. And we don't need Hitler, Franco, Ho Chi Minh, Idi Amin, or any other modern tinpot dictator from the last 50 years (yes, I'm not a big fan of Stalin, Mao, or Ghandi, either).

 

[KaiserElectric]

I have a great idea for the game. Let's say you have rifleman and everyone else is just researching Gunpowder. Your friend Hammurabi is being invaded by a Warmonger like Monty. You want to help your friend, but declaring war on Monty might result in you losing a good chunk of your empire. What if you could send your more advanced troops to your friend so they can use them against the enemy? It sounds like gifting a unit to your friend, but it has a few twists that make it unique. To do this, you simply move the unit into Hammurabi's territory and "rent" the unit to Hammurabi. You can choose to take back the unit at any point (at a cost to your diplomatic standing), or Hammurabi can return it to you. You could even get money from the unit! Howver, Monty might react negatively to your assistance, especially if these units kill his!

There should also be a corporation that lets you use animal resources (i.e. Fur, Deer, Whale, etc.) Any ideas?

 

[buffalo6542]

i would like to be able to air lift units to and from forts. also spies should be able to paradrop in enemy cities.

 

[buffalo6542]

I have a great idea for the game. Let's say you have rifleman and everyone else is just researching Gunpowder. Your friend Hammurabi is being invaded by a Warmonger like Monty. You want to help your friend, but declaring war on Monty might result in you losing a good chunk of your empire. What if you could send your more advanced troops to your friend so they can use them against the enemy? It sounds like gifting a unit to your friend, but it has a few twists that make it unique. To do this, you simply move the unit into Hammurabi's territory and "rent" the unit to Hammurabi. You can choose to take back the unit at any point (at a cost to your diplomatic standing), or Hammurabi can return it to you. You could even get money from the unit! Howver, Monty might react negatively to your assistance, especially if these units kill his!

There should also be a corporation that lets you use animal resources (i.e. Fur, Deer, Whale, etc.) Any ideas?

your saying like the units are mercenaries. i would like to be able to air lift units to and from forts. also spies should be able to paradrop in enemy cities.