Mechanics Brainstorm

[Drakle]

I'd like something with connecting roads to city-states outside of that one random city-state mission. Maybe even connecting roads to AI players cities, if they are friendly.

I'd like civilian units that are useful for warfare. Maybe an engineer line that can 'clear' forests and jungles. Not actually removing the forest or jungle, but removing the movement penalty for some turns, representing clearing paths. Later on they could also allow units to cross rivers over them like a bridge, and other stuff.

Further improvements could be worthwhile. Once railroads are done, there isn't a lot for workers to do. I'd like stuff like irrigation, forest planting, dams that are tile improvements, mountain top mining, etc.

In earlier eras before vassalisation, a peace option to 'Force Tribute'. Gives a large sum of gold, culture and golden age points. Maybe even free worker units without the penalty, to represent slaves. While they get a malus on all yields for some turns to represent humiliation. In early wars there often isn't anything to take, if you don't want their cities.

In terms of earlier exploration, I had a idea to replace ancient ruins, with minor settlements/tribes. Instead of getting rewards from simply moving on them, you would get rewards from settling a city near them. With all sorts of rebalanced rewards and bonuses. A more extreme idea is to also replace city states, with city states popping up in areas not settled by the start of the Classical era for half of nations. So you can avoid hyper close city states without having to conquer them and incur penalties. I find that city states are often in very annoying spots.

 

[pineappledan]

Promotion abilities that would be really nice to have:

• Ability that gives AoE Damage on tile pillage, like how Overrun gives AoE damage on kills, or how Pilum has AoE damage on Fortify
• An ability that lets you set how much extra HP is gained from pillaging tiles. We currently only have an ability that heals you to full HP, but it would be nice if we had one that let you heal 10 more than normal (35 total), for example
• An ability that, if the unit had it, they count as 2 units for all flanking attack calculations:
  • So for example, if you 2 units next to an emey unit, and 1 of yours had this promotion, then the game would say you have 3 units adjacent to that enemy unit, and flank damage would be calculated accordingly.
  • Because of how Flanking works now, it would also be useful on defense, because flank damage is based on the difference between how many units you have next to the defending unit, minus how many units they have flanking your attacking unit. So an enemy's flanking bonuses would only start when they have 3 units next to a unit with this bonus, instead of 2.

 

[Zuizgond]

On the pillaging mechanics, I think healing should only be granted when you pillage farms/plantations (maybe camps as well). Other tile improvements could give other yields but should not heal.

 

[Melchizedek]

Under some circumstances (e.g. after winning a war or upon an event), a great general could revolt. In this case tiles can be pillaged, cities have resistance, and recent social policies can be rejected (in this case the player could choose a new one, but the rejected policy would be unavailable for some turns). Civs might be given some covert means to foment or aide great general revolts. Great generals have had dominant impact on their own civilizations historically, but in game they only fight the enemy.

 

[Heinz_Guderian]

Promotion abilities that would be really nice to have:Ability that gives AoE Damage on tile pillage, like how Overrun gives AoE damage on kills, or how Pilum has AoE damage on Fortify
An ability that lets you set how much extra HP is gained from pillaging tiles. We currently only have an ability that heals you to full HP, but it would be nice if we had one that let you heal 10 more than normal (35 total), for example

Arent these already in the game via your hashemite raiders and goths UA?

 

[Bruhmoment]

I'm not sure, but is there a promotion that gives you food for pillaging?
Maybe a specific worker that can build mountain tunnels? It gets annoying when Inca just can't be killed

 

[Recursive]

I'm not sure, but is there a promotion that gives you food for pillaging?
Maybe a specific worker that can build mountain tunnels? It gets annoying when Inca just can't be killed

There isn't currently a promotion that gives Food from pillaging as far as I'm aware (although there are some features that give other yields from pillaging).

 

[Tarzan737]

In the trade screen you can trade to release or demand to release a vassal! That could be nice! It makes diplomacy even more deep.

And i have to make my comment about humankind. The diplomacy system is a joke imo.

 

[Solic]

We don't have that many diplomatic civs, so I'd thought it'd be cool if England would get a unique spy action that allows them to steal a world congress delegate. (kidnapping/bribery)

Other unique spy action options:
Pillage all trade routes from/to this city without incurring the diplo penalty (only from potentially being noticed as a spy)
Sabotaging a city, such that it has no air slots anymore for a limited time.
Performing an inquisition action, potentially making this city unable to be converted for X amount of time. (Only available if holding a holy city)
Removing all enemy franchises from the city and doubling up your own's bonus (Only available if you hold a corporation)

I feel like the system could be really expanded a lot more, but for sure the base should feel right first.

 

[Vhozite]

Disease is imo the biggest thing missing from the game. There are a couple token events about plagues but other than sucking a small amount of yields this mechanic does not exist in VP.

It’s absence feels especially noteworthy since we are living through a global pandemic right now.

 

[Bruhmoment]

Disease is imo the biggest thing missing from the game. There are a couple token events about plagues but other than sucking a small amount of yields this mechanic does not exist in VP.

I don't know, the events system already takes away so much yields, having another one would just be too much..

 

[Vhozite]

I don't know, the events system already takes away so much yields, having another one would just be too much..

I think disease could have affects a bit more involved than just a raw malus on yields. In anything it would be something that directly affected units, seeing as how (depending on the conflict) soldiers were often just as likely to die from disease and unsanitary conditions as they were enemy action.

Obviously nobody wants to play a game where half your soldiers are dying from diaherrea, but between the mass casualties in war and the widespread socio-economic affects diseases can have on a populace, I think it’s something that deserves to be more prominently represented in game.

 

[Stalker0]

lets not get too caught up in commentary on this thread. The goal is just a raw list of ideas, keep things following!

 

[SolutionIt]

Had a few more ideas to throw out there for today.

-Authority Opener Nerf: This is the best policy in the game hands down. I think the culture on kills should be moved to the Dominance Policy instead since being able to spend your first Social Policy on an Opener that basically rewards you too much Culture for defending yourself by killing enemy units as you progress through the game might as well be picked up. After all if you're gunning for the Culture Victory this policy has no downsides since you'll always have to defend yourself from a DV. In fact the Culture on Kills from this policy gets so overbearing sometimes that I can usually be ahead of another Civ by one Social Policy.

-Units stacked on or adjacent to a Great General can cross Mountains: Just to help make conquering The Inca more consistent if they spawn into too many Mountains or literally settle into a Mountain surrounded by Mountains on all sides.
-Cities can work the same tile in exchange for a yield nerf on that tile: Alleviates the issue from settling cities tightly early on.
-Improving a Resource for a City-State actually gives you influence.
-Reduce Unit Gift cooldown for City-States in exchange for an influence nerf: City-States are definitely too easy to conquer, especially if they are far away.
-Allow the Galleass to enter deep ocean once Astronomy is discovered.
-Terraforming Tiles in a Modern Era Technology in a similar vein to the Reforestation Mod: Turn Plains into Hills and Vice Versa.

-Port Improvement for Coastal Tiles next to Land Tiles: Act as Coastal Roads + Lighthouse, making blockading a coastal city trickier. Also gives a defensive bonus to naval units in it like Forts. Also a good excuse to give the Great Admiral a Unique Tile Improvement in a similar vein to the Ottoman's Tersane in 4UC. (If this is something someone is interested in doing I highly recommend you don't allow them to be built adjacent to each other).

-Archaeological Sites for Sunken Ships: Gives Work Boats a reason to travel outside of their borders.
-Allow your workers to cut down enemy forests when you're at war with them: I find it annoying I can't declare meaningful Economic Warfare against the Iroquois and also the fact you can't hurt an opponent's tiles outside of improvements.

Little unorganized but it was all I could think of.

 

[wabab]

Ways to takeover cities peacefully. More broadly, this can work into the current happiness mechanic (which feels pretty opaque currently, but that's another topic) so that there's penalties for both human and AI players for settling cities too far away or having low local city happiness. Technically, cities can rebel and the rebels can take over the city, but it's pretty uncommon, and practically non-existent for the AI.

More Atomic/Information Era land units, especially to replace the GDR and XCOM units.

New resource: Electrical power generation. Could be treated as some sort of luxury resource for happiness, or some production boost/yields boost. Could trade it to other nations for gold or vice versa.

 

[Hinin]

New resource: Electrical power generation. Could be treated as some sort of luxury resource for happiness, or some production boost/yields boost. Could trade it to other nations for gold or vice versa.

I would really like that element to be present : this way, we can replace the yield bloat of the endgame with electricity generation, and lock the most powerful buildings behind electricity requirement. This could be a nice way to slow down the endgame and spice it up a bit.

Also, in response to the health and climate change suggestions :

• The Health system introduced in the Health & Plague mod has a lot of ideas that could be translated well into VP (giving positive or negative health to specific terrain or buildings), but I dislike the random aspect. So if I introduced it to VP, I would simply put a threshold that creates a plague whenever the Health of a City goes below it. After that, it could be treated in the same way as a sort of negative religion (spreading through proximity and trade routes) with a base contagion (a core effect related to the type of disease) and later additionnal elements if the plague isn't treated and touches too many people (so additionnal maluses, with a limit of course).
• The main limitation of the climate change system is that Civ V doesn't allow terraforming in the normal view (the 3d models for the terrain don't change, only marshes, forests and jungles can appear and disappear without problem). Thus, effects must be searched elsewhere. I think a "pollution" element could be introduced : increased by population and some endgame buildings, and decreased by the number of forests/jungles and some other endgame buildings. When reaching a certain cap globally, it would trigger general effects that wouldn't be randomized : each new cap would increase the effects (ex. : less Food from farms and water tiles ; ability for Units to traverse Ice tiles or suffer malus from Snow tiles no more ; malus health for every City etc).

Obviously, the introduction of these two new systems would mean new buildings, new policy effects, new WCongress resolutions etc, so a lot of work for something that would be very difficult to balance. I don't know if that would be worth the amount of work, but we are simply brainstorming here, and there is no cost to that.

Finally, I would really like a more developped Revolution system, and tie it better with ideologies :

• Allow civilizations that entered the Industrial Era to choose an ideology immediatly if they want, but at the cost of a Revolution : global Unhappiness boost for a number of turns, barbarians in your territory, diplomatic penalties with other civs and CStates. Basically forcing yourself into an ideology but with a high cost.
• Increase the diplomatic penalty between ideologies, and create a new one between civs with and without ideologies (basically the old and the new system, like in 19th century Europe) to increase the negative effects of choosing a revolution instead of the more organic path of obtaining 18 policies or reach the Modern Era to gain an ideology.
  
• Create a new deal object "Alignement" that would be just below capitulation in term of difficulty to obtain : basically force your ideology on someone through military or heavy economic means (annexation already does that, but that basically requires you to eliminate a civilization at that stage of the game)
• Allow easier ideology swapping at the cost of Revolution each time you want to swap.

One interesting thing to do with this system would be to give Poland the ability to ignore Revolutions when swapping : it would make the civ have a very unique lategame where you can very easily adapt to ideology blocks or change your objectives.

 

[gwennog]

New resource: Electrical power generation. Could be treated as some sort of luxury resource for happiness, or some production boost/yields boost. Could trade it to other nations for gold or vice versa.

I would really like that element to be present : this way, we can replace the yield bloat of the endgame with electricity generation, and lock the most powerful buildings behind electricity requirement. This could be a nice way to slow down the endgame and spice it up a bit.

There had already been a discussion on this subject, I'm glad it was brought up to date. Adding a new resource, Electricity, and limiting the construction of recent buildings by the consumption of this one would be a good idea. Plants could produce this resource by converting strategic resources into it (you need 1 oil to produce a thermic plant and this produce X electricity resource). By bringing down the electrical network of a civilization, we could more effectively act against it (espionage or war).

If we add a notion of global warming, we could fight against it by making electricity "cleaner".

OK a lot of changes, perhaps, but so in phase with our world .

 

[Valvts]

Super great suggestions in here!

-- Make ancient ruins appear again throughout the game (maybe under a special event)
-- Make barbarians more sophisticated toward mid and late game: on higher difficulties you don't see barbarians because the AI has too many units to deal with them.
-- Connect a city state with a road reduces its influence reduction

 

[Drakle]

An idea about how to rebalance spawns and settling cities to an extent.

Cities get three pseudo specialist slots
Gardener - 3 Food
Craftsman - 2 Production
Trader - 2 Gold

They don't cost extra food or happiness issue. But they only produce those yields and not any specialist points.

But it means if you don't have any great tiles in your immediate ring, or are in desert/tundra, that you can still get a bit of growth. And can still get some production, even in production starved spots, like jungles. Same for gold, if you are lacking plantations/mines.

But once you start getting workers up, you won't need these tiles, because you will have farms, mines, etc.

Maybe some new pantheons could buff these, and attach faith to them. Since Pineapple wants to add more pantheons, and a mechanic like this would be perfect for a pantheon, since it is very early game.

 

[Zuizgond]

-Cities can work the same tile in exchange for a yield nerf on that tile: Alleviates the issue from settling cities tightly early on.

I particularly like this one.

I would even suggest that a tile go to the nearest city by default. And if a tile is at the same distance as 2 cities, then they each get half the yield (or 3 cities with 1/3 yield, etc)