Mechanics Brainstorm

[SolutionIt]

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.

I like the idea of a Force Tribute Option existing, but the only way I see it existing even when Vassalizing a Civ becomes an option would be as a way to negotiate a Peace Treaty before those first few initial turns where you can't. It'd basically be a Demand option during Wartime with an opposing Civ but with higher leverage depending on your War Score.

Speaking of which I know War Score can already go in your favor depending on your Military Strength at the very start of one if I'm not mistaken, but it should probably be adjusted if a Force Tribute option during wartime exists?

I'd already given a few ideas for more improvements. I like your ideas as well, and it is definitely a good idea to point out the lack of work for workers to do past Railroads. Highly recommend Reforestation btw.

I also don't think we need a separate unit to have workers that can be used during wartime either. I know I threw out the idea that workers should be able to terraform tiles and cut down forests and jungles in enemy territory that way they have a functional use during wartime outside of repairing your own pillaged tiles. Would be finally nice to pretty much outright cripple the Iroquois economically if they're deep inside of forests too.

 

[azum4roll]

I know I threw out the idea that workers should be able to terraform tiles and cut down forests and jungles in enemy territory that way they have a functional use during wartime outside of repairing your own pillaged tiles. Would be finally nice to pretty much outright cripple the Iroquois economically if they're deep inside of forests too.

That means destroying improvements (camps, lumber mills, logging camps, brazilwood camps, kunas, polders, etc.) your enemies have on their featured tiles.

 

[ridjack]

I know I threw out the idea that workers should be able to terraform tiles and cut down forests and jungles in enemy territory that way they have a functional use during wartime outside of repairing your own pillaged tiles.

This used to be possible. I used to fairly regularly escort a worker into enemy territory to remove an inconvenient forest or jungle so that my ranged units could get a city. Don't know when it was removed.

 

[Thibix Magnus]

- having stronger dark ages, either informally or with an official alternative to golden ages. Moments when you are not only stalled for a while, but have to go back in measurable ways. Parts of your empire becoming independent, losing population and buildings, forgetting techs and policies, but with stronger come-back potential. Current unhappiness can be unfun and frustrating, but weirdly I would like it to be both stronger and funnier, opening new options. Make golden age stronger after dark ages, or maybe when a dark age starts, you lose a policy but can reallocate all of them, or something else. I'd love a less linear path to victory. i.e. you were an aggressive empire, got beaten and conquered or just collapsed under your weight, but you can come back for a culture victory.

- letting new civilizations appear from the collapse of others, within reason. I.e. if in an unhappy empire, more than one city rebel and become city states in the same turn, they instead become a new player, or give a small chance of happening for a single city rebelling. Starts with the same techs, the same number of policies + 1 but entirely reallocated, a few units, a few trade routes and a treasury. If possible the new civ is linked historically, like a european power from Rome, or obviously USA from England. Same mechanic when a city state conquers another city, it might become a player (starts as vassal to the protector of the city state).

- reciprocally (and certainly easier to code), when conquering the last city of a player, have the option to let it become an allied city state.

- give units to players?? unless I missed how to do it in VP!

- allow you to plant great persons in allied city states (in exchange of influence?), particularly useful for citadels.

- I strongly second all ideas about environmental trade-offs. It should offer some control, like I don't want it to be linked to population, but to the choices you make (improvements, buildings...). Chopping all your forests or not letting a single patch of land "unimproved" should get you into negative returns (like turning tiles to desert over time, or decreasing great people rate). Some improvements like academies could have adjacency bonuses with unimproved tiles. Luckily there are immaterial resources like faith or culture that make it quite easy to provide alternatives to tile improvements. I hope one day I can try to mod my belief idea (here) where you forsake lots of gold and production in favor of the best culture/faith generation, and are encouraged to actively spread your religion or even conquer the world in order to remove improvements (There is also the global warming mod that could use some tweaks but has nice interactions with the world congress).

about new possible triggers to use for new beliefs or new instant yield stuff in general:
- pillaging a trade route
- capturing civilians
- expending civilians (missionaries, inquistors, diplo units, archeologists)
- finishing an improvement
- creating a unit
- improving a unit
- razing a city
- losing a city (!)
- losing a wonder race (yields depend on investment)
- discovering: new player, new city state, new natural wonder, new ruin, new barbarian camp
- becoming friend / ally with a CS
- completing a quest
- getting a lux for the first time
- getting a monopoly
- opening a franchise
- completing a theming bonus (only once per type)
- reaching a new level of popularity with a civ
- trading stuff, anything (yield proportional to the deal value for you)

 

[usadefcon1]

- Units should continue to follow movement orders even if their final destination is occupied (until the final turn of their orders)
- Retaking your own city there should be no resistance
- If one vassal revolts the others should be given the option to pick a side.
- Convert caravans to Trade Ships and vice versa with gold (like a promotion)
- Option to default all cities to Manual Specialist Control
- Units should not heal more if the nearest city is in resistance
- Are you sure you wish to declare war? pop up should happen in all war declare situations.
- Lakes should not stop blockades
- Move Defensive Pacts to Nationalism
- Remove the anti cav promotion from spearman (starts with pike)
- Chart that shows total city unhappiness based on type of unhappiness

I forgot:
- Notification when Civs form a Defensive Pact

 

[Recursive]

I forgot:
- Notification when Civs form a Defensive Pact

I added this already for next version.

 

[usadefcon1]

- Units should continue to follow movement orders even if their final destination is occupied (until the final turn of their orders)
- Retaking your own city there should be no resistance
- If one vassal revolts the others should be given the option to pick a side.
- Convert caravans to Trade Ships and vice versa with gold (like a promotion)
- Option to default all cities to Manual Specialist Control
- Units should not heal more if the nearest city is in resistance
- Are you sure you wish to declare war? pop up should happen in all war declare situations.
- Lakes should not stop blockades
- Move Defensive Pacts to Nationalism
- Remove the anti cav promotion from spearman (starts with pike)
- Chart that shows total city unhappiness based on type of unhappiness

I just realized in my original post I said move Defensive Pacts to Nationalism when I really meant move it to Military Science. Oops

 

[smorgasborgas]

1. Active Great People roles. It seems reductive to just expend them for yields, I would like to keep them around.

* If you take a Great Artist/Musician/Writer with you to war, every X number of enemy unit kills it witnesses, it will write a new great work? Or maybe only if you 'win' the war with >25 war score.
*Great Engineer doubles worker build speed if stationed in the same tile.
*Great Merchant increases all gold tile yields by +1 if stationed in a city (or Market, Bank, Caravanserai increases gold output by 5% each if GM in city, etc)
*Great Musician increases culture/gold/tourism from cities with Amphitheaters if stationed there, and all cities with Broadcast Towers if stationed in any city with a tower
*Great Artist similar to Great Musician, except with Temples and Museums
*Great Scientists can double science output of Academies and Universities
*Great Diplomat can double/halve influence regeneration/decay if stationed in city state territory. Or decrease captured city unhappiness.
*Great Prophet can double influence output in city
*Great General and Admiral already have active uses. Maybe Great Admiral can 'usher' other units over ocean that can't traverse it.
*Great Writer... I like how it is, but maybe use for propaganda later in the game? I doubt I wouldn't just expend for culture though


2. Origin based unit promotions. There's a huge promotion tree, but we only see a tiny piece of it in normal games. So free promotions based on origin city location would help with that and make settling in certain undesirable terrains less undesirable. Mitigated by requiring era buildings so you can't freely produce super units too soon.

1. If a city has a Barracks and is adjacent to a mountain, then newly created units have the hill promotion
2. If a city has an Armory and is adjacent to a mountain, then newly created units can traverse Mountains, like the Inca.
3. City with Barracks and Coast and River --> Amphibious.
4. City with Barracks and adjacent to >3 forest/jungle tiles --> Woodsmen
5. City with lots of plain Desert, Armory --> Treat desert like plains
5. Capitol City with Monument, Market, Armory --> Gift of the Pharaoh for Skirmisher class units.
6. City with Temple, Amphitheater, Armory, and NO library --> Faith From Kills (now it's getting convoluted, but you get the idea)
7. Etc.

 

[smorgasborgas]

Oh and I love city state quests, but hate how easy they are to just capture.

*Trade screen option to pay for CS release.
*World congress 'liberate all city states' proposal
*Warmonger score that scales with military size ratio. (Big military vs small gets more warmonger points)

 

[Tarzan737]

1.When a city is under blockade or if city health is down to red, the city bombard ability is removed.

2. Get a certain percent of vassals strategic resources or adjustable in vassals screen.

3. Masters workers can build in vassal teritory

 

[smorgasborgas]

1. A display saying how much damage you would take if an enemy unit were to attack YOU.

Right now we have the other way around, to assess whether or not attacking is a good idea without having to know all the promotion icons and do the math.

But how to assess whether or not allowing a unit to be attacked is a good idea? I.e. is it a suicide mission to leave my fusilier in that fort next to those lancers or should I get it out of there?

2. An ability to somehow liberate vassals. If I am at war with the master, then I'm automatically at war with the vassal, and if I liberate the vassal's cities, I get no credit.

Maybe vassals can be autonomous, but give their votes to the master and have to pay 50% of gold/science/culture to the master.

That way if I go to war with the master, they can still rebel or become my vassal. Or bribe me to go to war with the master in exchange for their vassalage.

 

[Ragic]

Surely there is something unique in Scientology

 

[Recursive]

Surely there is something unique in Scientology

An empire-wide Gold deficit.

 

[greenfieldpark]

How about new scenarios?
Ive always wanted to have a conquer a new world scenario. Whereby the european powers compete with colonizing a new world with less advanced civs.

The current scenario with this concept is not good.

Id like to see a more fleshed out version where you are competing in both the new and old worlds.

Id like to see the possibly of new nations rebelling from their masters and going out on their own.

Id like to see the ai fixed so they do a decent job of settling far off new worlds as, at least to me, they seem to do a poor job of this

 

[SolutionIt]

Kind of my own nitpick cause I noticed this when trying to re-design the Shoshone's UA to have recon units give border growth points to the nearest city when revealing tiles, but apparently that doesn't seem to work with that yield in specific, and any other yield is overpowered at the start of the game.

I wanted to give them a foraging angle where they'd convert border growth points into food when your borders expand naturally. Dream is dead though so I'm settling for something else atm.

Speaking of it'd be nice if at least one Civilization had an emphasis on Recon Units. I could see England having invisible recon units but the balancing for that would be entirely up in the air at this point. Hard to say if that is genuinely overpowered or not.

 

[black213]

In-game years shouldn't pass in predetermined chunks like now but instead be reflective of the average technological progress in the world?

 

[Whitehorns]

Some form of production-chain that is similar to Civ4 mod Realism Invictus, so that development is much more limited by resources'
distribution?

 

[smorgasborgas]

Some way to 'get rid of' AI cities that forward settle that doesn't involve razing.

*Disbanding - citizens move into your nearest cities and buildings are salvaged for some money
*Deportation - after capture, enemy can recover citizens and keep salvaged money.

Basically it's annoying that an AI, even a friendly one, can just settle in-between 2 of my oldest cities and if I don't like it my only option is to become a warmonger.

I'm not sure what the solution is, other than making the AI realize that if the ratio of (new city distance to their capital) / (new city distance to my capital) is > 2 or something, then it is essentially an offensive move and they should expect war with me.


That kind of brings me to my old proposal of certain amounts of justified war/city capture:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/smallish-warmonger-change-suggestion.665507/#post-15979918

 

[bonniepbilly]

I'd love to have the exciting part of the early game (the first Xs: exploration, expansion, and not too many cities to manage) extended later. To achieve this, we could have:
- to limit exploration in the early game, and not in the binary way imposed by continents. For example add some attrition on units when too far from their civ.
- have a few very dark ages that set civs back, lose a few cities, eliminate the least performing ones... This could be the result of a great barbarian invasion, plague, or else, hopefully not favoring too much militaristic civs.

 

[smorgasborgas]

I like that early game explore feeling a lot too. Maybe a setting that gives just an insane amount of barbarians. But they don't actually capture cities?