Let's make Civ 5

Of some of the suggestions discussed, I like these three best (assuming all of them can either be turned on or off in a Custom Game screen):

Being able to include plagues. It is a natural overpopulation control. There really aren't enough incentives for players (in gaming terms) to manage their cities carefully to keep them healthy. This would help. Once word got out to other civs, the city's trade routes would be severely affected, borders might close. The plague-ridden city might even intentionally spread it by continuing to trade with with cities as a sort of biological weapon. There are a lot of possibilities.

Different types of Colleges with Different Emphases: At first I thought this was overly complicating things, then I saw it as a way to emphasis specialization in certain cities or regions of a civ and it became more appealling.

Mountains not necessarily impassable: I like the idea of being able to move unit over or across mountains, but paying a penalty for it. If they didn't have some promotion for alpine combat or movement, then there would be a chance that they would be lost altogether. With the promotion, they would only take damage. With further alpine promotions, they would take less damage, etc. Up until the Industrial Age, the promotions would only be available for civs with mountains in their civ.

An idea from a different thread that I liked a lot, would be the ability to name geographic features and regions of your civ. Explorers or settlers could also name features of other civs. This would personalize the game and make it easier to find your way around large maps. It could adapt the pop up that is used when cities are founded.

I would like to throw out the ideas of creating a "Migration" button (like the Draft button) which could be activated when--- 1) a city become overpopulated and 2) the game has reached the industrial age (because advances in transportation were necessary to move masses of population).
The idea is a way to control overpopulation and help develop areas with available resources but small populations (ie. newly settled lands). There, of course, would need to be some sort of penalty associated with the gain. Perhaps the area receiving the influx of population would fall into anarchy for a turn. Suggestions are welcome.

Another idea which I haven't really thought through but would be interesting is adding Immigration to the game. Again, this could be triggered by overpopulation or a city falling into starvation. The Old Country would have to have open borders with the New Country, of course. The tricky part would be the benefits and liabilities for both the Old and New Countries. This is what I haven't thought through yet. Again, ideas are welcome.

Another general ideas would be to make an optional random natural disasters event (earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, droughts, locust swarms, etc.) which the player could include if he or she wanted. These natural forces also shaped history.
 
Fiend777Fits said:
how about no more terrain squares... am i crazy? but i believe this is possible in a turn-based game. it would include reworking the whole basis of civ of course. imagine if warcraft was turn-based and had more fiendly little pop-ups, then you get an idea of what i'm thinking.
No, the idea is bad! What are we going to have instead?
 
ProfessorK said:
An idea from a different thread that I liked a lot, would be the ability to name geographic features and regions of your civ. Explorers or settlers could also name features of other civs. This would personalize the game and make it easier to find your way around large maps. It could adapt the pop up that is used when cities are founded.

(...)

Another general ideas would be to make an optional random natural disasters event (earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, droughts, locust swarms, etc.) which the player could include if he or she wanted. These natural forces also shaped history.

I like the idea of naming certain geographical features. As it is right now, you can place a note of the map, but it looks like a square box with a pointer (not really a map tag). If you could really place names on major geographical features, the closest city in your CIV ought to receive some prestige (culture) points! You could name the place anytime you discover it, but the bonus would not be issued until that feature ends up within your borders at some point during the game. It's kind of a can of worms because it does open up all sorts of practical gaming and programming issues. But it would be interesting nonetheless.

Random disasters are OK as long as they can be toned down or turned off completely as part of the regular game options. Flood valleys ought to have a risk of being actually flooded. Volcanoes (if any) ought to erupt as they did in the previous versions of CIV. Tsunamis, earthquakes, locust plagues, etc. Why not.
 
About "more terrain squares"... I kinda hate having random patches of desert in what should be temperate land. Deserts ought to be centered (and much larger) in a few areas of the map, either near the equator, or in flat areas with few or no rivers. I'm surprised plateaux with a few entry passes never occur in the random maps. They make for highly defensible natural strongholds.
 
Swedishguy said:
Well that's what is called random. What are the chances that it will appear if the programmers haven't programmed it that way?

Thanks for pointing out the obvious. Random or not, I'd rather have a randomly generated terrain that looks somewhat natural. It's just plain* silly to have desert right smack in the middle of grassland and forests. On the other hand, something that seems to be missing are wetlands/marshes/swamps. Apparently, there are no random bayous in CIV4. A better random generator would know where or where not to place deserts and wetlands. Another feature are northern fjords. It'd be nice to see areas like that instead of relegating the possibility to non-random mods/scenarios. Just a thought.

(*) No pun intended. ;)
 
Ambreville said:
Arlborn's point is that mountains being impassable make it impossible to come up with mountain-based Civ's. I guess that could be solved in a separate mod (Tibetans, Incas, Swiss civs with unique mountain abilities/benefits would be offer new approach).

The mountains in Civ IV are like the Alps or the Himalayas, where no one lives. The mountains where people can live are the "hills" in the game. I think the impassable mountains are a great feature, no matter how annoying it is when they are in the fat cross and can't be used for anything.

Öjevind
 
ProfessorK said:
Of some of the suggestions discussed, I like these three best (assuming all of them can either be turned on or off in a Custom Game screen):

Mountains not necessarily impassable: I like the idea of being able to move unit over or across mountains, but paying a penalty for it. If they didn't have some promotion for alpine combat or movement, then there would be a chance that they would be lost altogether. With the promotion, they would only take damage. With further alpine promotions, they would take less damage, etc. Up until the Industrial Age, the promotions would only be available for civs with mountains in their civ.

No troops ever passed across the Alps or the Himalayas. They went through mountain *passes*, which exist in Civ IV. I like it that way. Also, I don't think the game needs a lot of new units. Though perhaps it could include dragoons (as in Civ II) to fill out the space between Knights and Cavalry. It's a bit weird to have an army made up of macemen, musketmen, trebuchets and rifle-toting 19th type cavalry.

Öjevind
 
About units: I dislike having to build them. I'd rather there be a way of recruiting units that would vary over time in things like how much you can train them, what affects how many you can recruit, etc. For example, in the Feudal era you'd call up your "nobles" to fight for you, whereas in an Early Modern Era you could recruit more into the standing army, hire mercenaries, or even have a levee en masse. Once you get into the later Industrial Era you could start building them as you do now.
 
Öjevind Lång said:
No troops ever passed across the Alps or the Himalayas. They went through mountain *passes*, which exist in Civ IV. I like it that way. Also, I don't think the game needs a lot of new units. Though perhaps it could include dragoons (as in Civ II) to fill out the space between Knights and Cavalry. It's a bit weird to have an army made up of macemen, musketmen, trebuchets and rifle-toting 19th type cavalry.

It's not because you personally don't like the idea of crossing mountains that it is necessarily a bad one. I could respond to your "dislike" by stating my "likes", in which case no one gets anywhere. This forum is there to post ideas either way, remember?

For your information, Nepalese people live in the Himalayas. There are plenty of villages in the Alps. Of course no one lives in glaciers, but there are valleys and mountain villages where people live nonetheless. And believe me, these places are nothing like *hills*. I lived for 20 years in France's Maritime Alps and spent quite a bit of time up in the mountains -- there ARE lots of people there. There are villages perched way high on terrain I wouldn't call merely a *hill*, but a bonafide "mountain". So the idea of mountain CIV's isn't as far-fetched as you may think, especially as a separate mod.

Furthermore, it is guaranteed in real life that for each defense there should come a way to get around it. The old shield vs sword thing. Hey, ever heard of "Chasseurs Alpins", "Gebirg Jager", "Alpini", "Gurkas", etc. These are all specialized mountain troops. Impassable mountains? In general yes, but not as a systematic guarantee! If you have a LARGE range of mountains, the game will not allow you to get through since there will be no passes. Doesn't happen in regular play as far as I know, but in a mod, there's much you can do, especially if it focuses on "montagnards" vs. lowlanders. :)

In the ancient times there were no good passes to get through the Alps from Gaul to northern Rome. Hannibal managed to get through with a lot of difficulty (and losses of men, horses, and elephants). Napoleon did the same in the 19th Century, with comparable result (minus elephants of course!). In the process, Napoleon actually built a road which still exists today. It is called, quite naturally, "La Route Napoleon". The definition of where a hill ceases to be a hill and becomes a mountain doesn't seem very clear in the minds of a lot of people who haven't lived in mountain areas. Just a thought.
 
I almost completely agree to the above statement.
 
Commander Bello said:
I almost completely agree to the above statement.

(GASP) Dare you express a personal preference? I could respond to your "dislike" by stating my "likes", in which case no one gets anywhere. This forum is there to post ideas either way, remember?

Öjevind
 
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