Little things you'd like to see in Civilization VII

[Bonyduck Campersang]

I would like CiVII to do what YnAMP has done in Civilization VI: make it so that civilizations from the same region start close to one another, e.g. African civs start together, Far Eastern civs start together, etc. Or at least make it an option if some players prefer completely random starting locations.

 

[Evie]

As an option that could be interesting, though it may be limited by civ terrain preferences (eg, it's more important to start egypt near a floodplain than near Nubia.

But it should not be the default, as weird what ifs are very much part of civ.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Oh, and I'd like the option to cancel a command you just gave to a unit. Nothing makes me rage-quit like accidentally moving my garrisoned ranged unit out of the city in a precarious siege situation.

 

[Caesar of Bread]

Great Entrepreneurs?

Royal marriages

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Great Entrepreneurs?

Royal marriages

I can't see royal marriages becoming a thing in Civilization. It would require a dynastic simulator, as well as being able to differentiate between very different systems of rulership and inheritance for different polities. In short, it would require a great deal of complex mechanics with little pay-off.

How would royal marriages even work? The game spans such a long period of time that a marriage between two individuals would survive for about 2-5 turns. Unless you're thinking about some sort of a contract where two families agree to marry generation-to-generation, but, again, to what end?

 

[Hellenism Salesman]

Oh, and I'd like the option to cancel a command you just gave to a unit. Nothing makes me rage-quit like accidentally moving my garrisoned ranged unit out of the city in a precarious siege situation.

Agreed.

More broadly I’d love an undo button, but to me that’s such a big deal it would hardly be a “little” thing.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I can't see royal marriages becoming a thing in Civilization. It would require a dynastic simulator, as well as being able to differentiate between very different systems of rulership and inheritance for different polities. In short, it would require a great deal of complex mechanics with little pay-off.

How would royal marriages even work? The game spans such a long period of time that a marriage between two individuals would survive for about 2-5 turns. Unless you're thinking about some sort of a contract where two families agree to marry generation-to-generation, but, again, to what end?

It would be a way to form possibly alliances. I think it would be interesting if it was tied to a monarchy government into which you could "marry off" children and they in turn will form an alliance with other civs, and give diplomatic visibility and bring back certain information as well, without espionage in place. Certain leaders like Maria Theresa could have that mechanic built into their ability without having a monarchy. Considering leaders are already immortal, it's not farfetched to think that others wouldn't be either.

 

[Venceslau Pietro Pietra]

If they keep the district's system, a great people type for every main district like the great entertainer a lot of people already pointed and some sort of diplomat/statesman for the two purple districts are welcome, I barely build any entertainment complex in all this civ 6 years, a new great people could be an incentive.

And a minor aesthetic feature I wish are small NPCs wandering around the hexes and doing stuff, like in the Tropico series, they left their house in the city center and go to work at a lumber mill improvement, and later they pay a visit to the holy site before going back home, for example

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

It would be a way to form possibly alliances. I think it would be interesting if it was tied to a monarchy government into which you could "marry off" children and they in turn will form an alliance with other civs, and give diplomatic visibility and bring back certain information as well, without espionage in place. Certain leaders like Maria Theresa could have that mechanic built into their ability without having a monarchy. Considering leaders are already immortal, it's not farfetched to think that others wouldn't be either.

But you can already form alliances? And espionage is already in the game? Meshing the two together doesn't seem to me to be a very compelling reason for adding a mechanic which I feel would grow stale after the first few games.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

But you can already form alliances? And espionage is already in the game? Meshing the two together doesn't seem to me to be a very compelling reason for adding a mechanic which I feel would grow stale after the first few games.

Considering we don't know how those things would work in Civ 7, I don't see why we couldn't have that?
Anyways that's just a small part of making governments more interesting in Civ 7, and that idea could work for monarchies.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Considering we don't know how those things would work in Civ 7, I don't see why we couldn't have that?
Anyways that's just a small part of making governments more interesting in Civ 7, and that idea could work for monarchies.

I guess you're on to something

 

[Krajzen]

Rankings, ledger with statistics for each major civilization... Both interactive during the game and as a part of endgame screen, along with the replay map showing world's evolution.

I love to see graphs documenting civs economic rise and fall, various interesting statistics and comparisions, who does what the best, who is rising power, this is genuinely useful UI information as well as fun for a lot of people, and really isn't hard to implement. Besides, I just love stuff such as statistics, demographics, population density, per capita productivity etc.

The only reason not to implement it is because hurr you are supposed to get info about other players through espionage but come on, it never works out like this anyway, just keep spies for unconvering fog of war, sabotage and diplomatic secret activity, allow us to see fun statistics about the game world, at least from the industrial era onwards or at the end of the game, governments knew who has how much population and army since 19th century. Even before 19th century rulers could estimate how mighty other realms were. Hide some strategic stuff in the fog of war, requiring spies to research it, and turn non - strategic stuff into cool comparisions between civs.

 

[mitsho]

Deserts should be as hard to traverse as hills, even if flat.

Regarding districts: Just keep one with x slots. Make the buildings inside them determine their "colour", mixed ones (Library AND Workshop) should give special benefits.

 

[FishFishFish]

Deserts should be as hard to traverse as hills, even if flat.

I'd like if they went a step further. If a military unit ends its turn on a desert or tundra tile outside of friendly territory, it should take a small amount of damage.

 

[Abaxial]

A better progression of units, with less big jumps.

 

[mitsho]

I'd like if they went a step further. If a military unit ends its turn on a desert or tundra tile outside of friendly territory, it should take a small amount of damage.

Sure, exploration should be hard, not tedious

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

I'd like to see a reïmplementation of the city naming mechanic in Civilization V where the game was able to tell whether two cities had the same name and to automatically change the name of the second city by moving on to the next one in the list. This would be extremely important for situations such as where city lists for two civilisations overlap, (as in the case of Timurids and Persia, or Mongolia and Transoxiana, or Rome and Italy) and where a city-state is also the 9th or 10th city name in a city list for a major civilization (e.g. Sardis and Persia/Byzantium, Kazan and Russia, Kiev and Russia, Mari and Sumeria/Akkad etc.)

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I'd like to see a reïmplementation of the city naming mechanic in Civilization V where the game was able to tell whether two cities had the same name and to automatically change the name of the second city by moving on to the next one in the list. This would be extremely important for situations such as where city lists for two civilisations overlap, (as in the case of Timurids and Persia, or Mongolia and Transoxiana, or Rome and Italy) and where a city-state is also the 9th or 10th city name in a city list for a major civilization (e.g. Sardis and Persia/Byzantium, Kazan and Russia, Kiev and Russia, Mari and Sumeria/Akkad etc.)

I assume that wouldn't be necessarily as there weren't any cities that overlapped in Civ 6. I don't think they would do that for Civ 7 either.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

I assume that wouldn't be necessarily as there weren't any cities that overlapped in Civ 6. I don't think they would do that for Civ 7 either.

I play with a lot of mods, so there definitely is overlap for me. And if they introduce the Timurids or Italy, or any other civilization that shares city names with another civilization, they definitely will need to.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I don't think this is a little thing, but it also doesn't fit the other threads we have underway regarding Civ 7, so I'll put it here.

I wonder if the late game could be made more interesting if the rival civs 1) were better programmed to band together against you when they see you emerging as the clear leader in terms of some victory condition and 2) had specific resources for them (when working collectively) to impede your progress, but of course 3) there were things you could do in response to that drag that they put on your march toward victory.

I play Civ V, and in a small way, that's in the game, at least for Domination victory. As you start conquering, you get little indicators of their displeasure on their leader-screens, and then at some point a significant number of them will all declare war on you at once. That actually does represent a good mid-game challenge for me, because it often happens when my troops are spread thin, and I really do have to scramble to defend on other fronts. But it happens mostly just with regard to that victory condition. I'm thinking a little bit also about Civ V's ideology dynamic, where, once you've declared, the number of civs in the two other ideologies might have sufficient cultural pressure to make your happiness tank and set you back a little bit.

I think it would be cool if, for every victory condition, the other civs could band together to make it, in some practical way, more difficult to achieve that victory condition. Not that automatically the whole world gangs up on you, but just that alliances against you become more likely, and that those alliances can truly represent an impediment to your progress. You can ward it off a little through favorable diplomacy. You can just amp up even further the things that contribute to the victory condition you are pursuing, etc.

It seems like a manageable addition to the diplomacy AI (in Civ V the drag on happiness is nothing other than a function of the fact that you have two ideologies subtracting from your happiness and only one contributing to it, so with no more "brainpower" than that, the game can give you a little late game challenge). Anyway, that there be more such resources for rival civs in alliance to impede your progress, though in every case with something you can do to combat, or pre-combat by good empire-management, that resistance.