Let's make Civ 5

[Chutasynth]

There is a map editor, I believe it is called world builder, once in a game open the game menu (esc) and chose world builder to edit the current map, if you want to start from a blank canvas just erase everything.

Yes, it's true. But I want a standalone application like in previous Civs, that allow us to customize the rules or create random maps easily. When I download a map I want to check it first before playing it, fixing starting locations and placing new resources.

Another ideas:

- The coorporations/entreprises should be divided in public and private (You can't force expansion of a private coorporation). Let's include an oil company.

- City radius in some civics sounds good (like in communism), anyway we should find a new way to exchange food between cities (like de caravan did in civ 2).

- Add percentage value to religions within a city. Foreign nationalities and religions values should create minorities in a city and be a cause for civil disorder. We should be able to commit genocide. (hehe)

- With a new economic system the tax system should change to a budget system. High taxes should affect the population. The science research, education, health and military manteniance should be part of the budget.

- A fact in previous civs is that game doesn't care about people. If I have a little war against some powerful nation, I receive nuclear attacks and total war killing hundreds of people. In these kind of actions, Civ 5 should have more effects in diplomacy and war weariness. The other nations should see you as a tiranous and bloody leader.

- In the currency system, you should create the national wonder, National Bank.

 

[rysmiel]

socialist economies are doom to die.

It's far too soon to tell on that one.

economic victory is a good idea. And it it should satify some indicators, not one.

I'm unsure how to well define it, though. just getting a certain amount of money seems too simple, and also, if the money threshold is not ludicrously high, it would cripple trying to get to other conditions using strategiies of large-scale pre-buying.

I agree all cities should have their unique buildngs, but how to do it? Industary makes the world look same. If a new city is established after industary era, it has no much history, without wonders, how can it be unique?

I'm all for all cities of the same size looking the same in the same era. More changes of appearance between eras would be good though.

City radius should be elimilated in some political systems.

I vote very very strongly against this.

Stalingrad Battle...I think it requires shift to a battle mode. One ture one year--it is too long for a single battle.

This too. No tactical battle modes in Civ; there are plenty of tactical battle games in the world, and only one Civ.

 

[tom2050]

Okay, here is my opinion....

Civ IV is not a bad game, but doesn't keep my interest for too long either. Civ II and III (although I couldn't stand III at first, now is my favorite to date ) are more fun to play.

1. Battles, the way it's set up in CIV is utterly preposterous, worse than in Civ III. When every single unit has a single strength, it leaves no tactics, tactics went out the window. It's a simple matter of building the type of unit based on it's modifier percentage for what you need (swordsman for city attack, archers for city defense, etc). Now this is okay... but this would be better (and I was hoping Civ IV was going to be like this)...
- give each unit a seperate attack and defense factor (as in Civ III)
- and give each unit greater abilities vs. certain types of units, or a specific unit (as in Civ IV)
- these greater 'abilities' vs certain units could be categorized based on offense and defense
- keep a 'unit health' factor of some sort
- promotions were a great idea, and they should keep these so the player can individualize each unit

that is not really a groundbreaking idea, yet brings tactics to a whole new level. This way, defensive type units like spearman would still have a bonus defending against horseman (mounted units) but would fare much better at defense than at offense (since the sight of a bunch of spearman chasing mounted warriors around is quite ridiculous, so in this case, a spearman should not get as much of a bonus vs mounted units on the offense). It is really this simply, and they would have a battle system capable of almost anything. They should add some other things, such as after a certain point, a unit is no longer effective at all (so spearman dont take out tanks), although this was mostly solved in CIV, due to the chance being so far apart, unless the tank was badly damaged.

- if they use their imaginations, they could set up something such as the ability for units to create battle formations (armies as in CivIII), or keep it the same as in CIV, whereas the attacker faces the toughest defender.

They need to fix the modern era units, aircraft, and navy... these have been an absolute mess. Bombarding from a distance works better than suicide cannons. Aircraft need to be more powerful and be able to sink ships, and destroy ground units (not all but some, otherwise they are next to useless to build). The aircraft carrier needs to eventually replace the battleship as the main naval power in the modern era, with modern destroyers, and cruisers for protection, with a higher use of missle systems (since that is how it actually is) and air force to project power.

The modern era of combat has completely changed, this could easily be implemented with the above combat system (simple mix of CivIII and IV), giving all special forces, marines, armed forces, etc their individual strengths and weaknesses. The modern era should be 1 of the more exciting times to play. And this would force the player to not just make tanks, but to make a variety of forces (since tanks alone will get slaughtered, and do require combined arms to be successful, which has been proven time and time again).

I actually have not tried in Civ IV telling your war allies to attack a certain city, not even sure if it works well, but I think they could expand this quite a bit, without too much difficulty... just another diplo option. Even SMAC had this option.

- and the BIGGEST THING, allow HUGE maps with the ability to field huge civ's! If someone does not want that, let them turn it off, or play a small map... but after Civ 1, 2, and 3... then in 4 you are stuck with a puny small civ on a puny small map, most of the time it's just hit 'enter', 'enter', 'enter' for next turn, I hope they go back to big scale!

- I hope they improve the terrain so it isn't just a mush of whatever it throws in there, and actually makes sense.

As long as they stick with the formula, of what made it great throughout the many years, I have faith it could be the greatest of all time.... and I hope it is, CIV got shelved after 3 months, back to playing CIII.

 

[tom2050]

A map that can support 200 civs. (like Earth)

If piossible, brilliant, in reality, erach turn would take a billion years, so sadly its not going to happen

The AI does not use any groundbreaking technology to do it's job, sure CIV has come quite a ways over CIII, but like in CIII, they give the AI an extremely limited forcepool to choose from. This makes it so the AI has an easy job of choosing what units to build. Then, if something happens (such as war), the AI simply uses the 'Goto order' to send each unit somewhere, which is the same thing I do. Usually, if not at war, the AI does absolutely nothing at all with it's units, other than patrol, or putting more defenders somewhere. CivIII went slow, not because alot was going on, but because of sloppy programming, CIV goes far faster. I agree, have a map that supports 50 or so civs. Each turn should not take more than a minute or 2 (excluding watching units move) given the way the AI makes it's moves and makes it's decisions.

 

[tom2050]

Although Soren and the team have done a great job with AI, I think it could be dramatically improved without too much work. By giving the AI the ability to make short-term and long-term decision making processes, the AI could have mobile offense and defense 'teams' which simply do that; an AI's territory would be mapped out per square with a threat-assessment algorithm to determine the likelihood of the chance that square could be attacked by an enemy. In the dead center of it's empire, the chance is going to be 0% in most circumstances. Near borders and coasts, it will be higher. The AI should fortify these areas more heavily than in the center of its empire. (Instead of simply having it defend each city with a given set of defenders, and the capitol with more). On the borders of a civ in which it has bad relations, the increases the threat of war, so both civs should bring more troops to that front.

In the same sense, if a civ, using it's long-term decision making process, decides to go to war with another civ, it should create groups of units to bring to the battle front, then declare war in order to launch pre-emptive strikes. It's nothing that would be incredibly difficult to achieve, without too much more work. It could simply recon these areas first, determine the other players strengths, bring forth it's armies, declare war, etc.

I know that AI will not be given a high priority in 5, since it is not worth it from the developers point of view, and will not increase sales, but small things such as this would greatly improve AI play.

 

[tom2050]

Anyway, where was I, ah yes, I don't want more scenarios, I never play them, I find the idea of a Custom, random game much more appealing. I want to see countries evolve and their philosophies become defined, Switzerland doesn't like to get involved with other people politics. The Japanese have a lot of respect for honour. These aren't necessarily defined by the country when it is founded, but by the situation it grows in.

I never play the scenarios either, except for maybe once each, some are quite enjoyable. But you bring up an excellent idea. Each 'nation' would develop traits of how it behaves. From the programmers perspective, initially each civ would have no behavior traits, but as time goes on, depending on the decisions the civ makes, those decisions would increase the chance of that civ making a similar decision in the future. Thus, if a civ backstabs you or another AI, it will not necisarily keep doing the same thing, but it now has a (10)% chance 'liklihood' that it will do something similar in the same situation. If that civ does it enough, the chance could go up to 50%, thus influencing that civ to do the same thing, but at the same time (over the course of the game), if it does the latter enough times, it may eventually change it's traits and become an hornourable nation. In the previous case though, the country does not care about 'honour' but more about its own 'personal gain'. What the AI builds in each city would have a minor increase in what type of civ it is also. Nations that build alot of military but keep them within their borders would have the personality trait of 'militarily defensive', whereas others which attack would be 'warmongers'.

The human player can also be 'rated' by the same algorithm to determine the players personality. These could also be brought into play during diplomacy, so civ's with the same types of personalities will get along better than those that differ.

Personalities could be based on everything that is already in the game:
Military, Religion, Economy and trade, willingness to help other civs in need, etc...

Some of these have actually already been incorporated into CIV, such as helping other civs, trading, etc.. so it is halfway there.

this would bring a whole new aspect to the game, and would be something that also would not be too difficult to implement.

 

[CivLuvah]

CIVILIZATION IV IS NOT A DISSAPOINTMENT!!!! DDDDDDDDDDDDDDUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Everyone loves Civ4

 

[rysmiel]

CIVILIZATION IV IS NOT A DISSAPOINTMENT!!!!

The word I would use for Civ IV is "travesty", actually; that and some other words not fit for a family environment.

 

[kivanc]

in my opinion, civ4 is really fine. but i agree that it is working slow. especially resources were better when u compare with civ3.

features that can be included in civ 5:
* we could build tile improvements by paying money; instead of using workers, it could just take some turns. just like we do in real-time war strategy games. moving workers is really boring. it takes much of the players' time really!

* designing our own units. we could design creative units in alpha centauri and that was very very enjoyable. examples: paradropping settlers, air transport

* city maintenance could be checked again; as it is not possible to build many cities. but in civ 3, i could build even hundreds!

* i didn't like features religion and corporation. yes, they are very very helpful about city parameters; food, happiness etc. but it takes much much time to spread them and moreover you always have a chance to fail.

 

[Balderstrom]

I've had well over 50 cities. Granted that isn't "hundreds". But its certainly more than oh I dunno 12 ;-)

 

[kivanc]

yes you can go up 60-70 or even 100 later in the game. but in the beginning eras, you need to continue long time with 10-15 only. Then you can expand after some tech.
still there is a slight diff about maint matter with civ3.
i think the reason they made this is that, so that people shall feel enough with smaller maps. as they are not able to build much cities, they will the map is large enough. as maps larger than 120*80 needs a very strong pc else you must wait long between turns.
civ4 3D is slowing down the pc really. Althogh mine is not very old.

 

[jsweeney]

i was thinking of a state system that allows you to group a tiles together that are around a city to be a "state" where that city works. You can even group more than one city per state. I would be equally cool if you could change the civics of each individual state, which could lead to civil war if the leader decides to choose a national civic. Also territories would be a nice feature BUT you must have either borders with the territory or a city or fort in territory.

 

[warpstorm]

...would not be too difficult to implement.

The SDK is out there, hop to it.

 

[kivanc]

*yes. i agree that civics should be flexible for each city/state. combining a few cities and founding a federal type of civ could be helpful in some cases.

*tax rate can be changed for each individual city/state, that would be very fine as well.

 

[Balderstrom]

What I want to know, is how come I can't write off Corporations that lose money on my Empires taxes ;-)

 

[The End Is Nigh]

There is a map editor, I believe it is called world builder, once in a game open the game menu (esc) and chose world builder to edit the current map, if you want to start from a blank canvas just erase everything.

I believe he asks for an editor similar to the one included with Civ III. Which is actually what most people want!

 

[kivanc]

1) State-Civic-Tax System
Instead, I always support a federal-states system in civ. If it could be, it would be very easy to manage. You divide your civ to 5-6 states. Each state has some number of cities. You manually divide them as you want. But of course, each division change requires some turns of anarchy, like a revolution.
After that, some of the civics shoudl be for allover the civ but soem should be flexible for federal states. For example, the economic, government civic should be common for all states but labor, religion and maybe legal civics should be chosable for each federal state. Like serfdom in east and emancipation in west; christianity in north, islam in south, no religion in west etc etc.
And each individual city should have it own tax rate. For example: Amsterdam 100% gold, maastricht 20%culture,40&gold,40%science, the hague 100% espionage etc. This modification woudl help much. Adjusting city specialists is not enough for anything.

And the civic types should be more. We only have 20 types of civics. And half of these civics are useless, only to be used during old ages.


2)Worker Improvements & Settlers
No workers! You just spend some hammers and some golds (changing according to improvemnet/resource type) and then some turns later, the improvemenet is on the place. This is similar to Stevenbear told; national project spending.
Settlers, are good as it is now. But I liked "migration" idea. You just click one button like drafting, then select 5! 1 population lost as penalty. 4 is transferred. Now during transfer, if you tell them where to move, half of the citizens moved to that city generates unhappiness. In this case, if you select a city 4 moves to the other city. But extra 2 unhappiness in that new city.
If you don't select where to transfer, no unhappiness point. And the xml decides where people will move, they will be more likely to move to multiple (2-3) different cities. Generally to neighbour cities which have good health points.
Another feature could be something like that. You migrate 1 population and city pop decreases by one. But it creates 1 town! This action should spend some money as well.

3) City Screen:
You should be able to build 3 things at the same time.
1st type: Settlers. There is no other alternative for that type. You can build settlers anytime you want. But if you build, city growth halts.
2nd type: Units
3rd type: Building or Wonders

If you build culture, wealth or science, you cannot build any type else.

 

[kivanc]

I got a bunch of ideas.

The current research system doesn't make sense, because the way I think of it, people didn't just sit down and say "okay, let's invent gunpowder." So I came up with a more logical approach.

1. Have research broken up into Discovery, Engineering, Religious, Civics, and Military.
2. Research expense is divided up amongst the groups and can be adjusted accordingly, except for discovery, which doesn't need funding.
3. When certain things are invented or discovered, they may add to the research of other groups. Example: Gunpowder is discovered so additional research points are added to Military and Engineering. In the old system, gunpowder unlocked rifeling.
4. Certain discoveries or inventions may be nation-specific and cannot be invented by other nations until that nation invents or discovers them.

Very good idea !

 

[kivanc]

I almost 100% agree with you. Not to be rude, but most every suggestion and idea I see in these threads will just add TONS of unneeded micromanagment/complexity/balance issues. I don't at all think Civ IV is the best game it can be, but I now see why they pay professionals big bucks to come up with the crap that goes into games- no offense but I'm glad none of you guys are actually making Civ V !

civilization was always complex man! it was complex in 1993, and gets complex as time goes by! this is the beauty of it ! That's why it's addiction. No, really ! I'm not joking...

We're talking about Sid Meier's Civilization, not SIMS, not NFS, not Counter Strike, not GTA !
OK, each game is beautiful with its own feautures. Some are complex, and some are funny. They are for different moods of persons.
Civilization is for guys trying to parameterize everything; managing etc etc... It's more than playing a "game", in fact.

 

[josef andrén]

Hi, this is my first post here... Civ 4 with expansions gives me the same urge of playing again and agin which hasnt happened since civ 2... great game.

This is what I think should be included in the fifth:

1. I miss the movies from civ 2. They did ALOT.
2. Spies should be able to do more. Power em up a bit.
3. Disasters, floods and so on..more devastating than they are now.
4. The idea of making civilizations have their own unique units and buildings is a nice addon.. They should it a little further by making civs even more unique.
5. youll probably hang me for this one.. but I think the tech tree should go a little further before it hits the future tech... and make cities, or atleast some kind of outposts able to build in the sea (maybe to mush of Alpha Centauri over this one)
6. missions like those added in civ 4 of the type " complete 11 colosseums before " should be more common.
7. a more detailed civiclopedia, with lots of juicy facts and nice pictures.
8. Worker AI should be improved, and the AI in general offcourse.
9. Get the throne room back! =P

Also liked some of your ideas...

1. Make out a nice system that lets you research more than one branch of the tech tree at once.
2. Weather.
3. Give growing cottages minor abilities that resembles a city.

Thank you for your time!