My Updated List of Civ Suggestions (01/21)

[sen803]

Now that we have the Statue of Zeus, Byzantium, Babylon, and Kublai Khan it is clear that Civ6 will be wrapping up soon.


I think the developers have done a nice job with NFP and making it a combination of new material and reviving favorites, as well as finding a way of making some of the less conventional material optional. I am glad that the developers have brought back some key classic Civ content in NFP, as the developers not only have to consider actual history, but at this point they have to consider the history of the civilization franchise!


Overall, I do think Civ6 increasingly has the feel of being a more complete game, with the new content and the additional balance changes. However, I think a few additional changes would help make the game feel more polished before they release Civ6: Complete. I also think that there is some additional content that could be released as additional DLC. At the end of the day, I think the developers should ask themselves both with any new content and with balance changes what is needed to make Civ6 truly complete.


Below is an updated version of my own list of recommendations for the game. I posted versions of this in the past, but I’ve updated and added some thoughts based on the recent patches. Again, I do not claim that all of these ideas are original; they are just a collection of things I have thought while playing the game and read.

 

[sen803]

New Content that I think could enter Future DLCs:


General New Content:

· I think one game play concept that would be marketable and could be worked into a DLC without necessarily needing an entire expansion is disease/health. I still find it very surprising that with the exception of sewer systems, there really is no inclusion of health or the healthcare system in Civ6. It would be interesting to see disease and have it interface with the disaster system as well as the carbon emissions in gathering storm. There could be a health currency (think Civ4) which is related to population size, housing, resources, CO2, recent disasters etc and would affect food supply, growth and happiness. A more nuanced version of disease could include a medical district with an apothecary, hospital, and medical research building, or some similar escalation, as well as have great healers. A simpler version of disease would just use the sewers and could add a hospital as a city center building; perhaps even aqueducts and Dams could have some health. I would also like to see pollution as a result of city growth and burning carbon, which could be mitigated by medical buildings. If a health currency is too much of a change for a DLC, then I think they should at least somehow include hospitals alone as a city center building—perhaps they could add some housing and amenities. I would find is somewhat surprising if the developers thought it would be reasonable to finalize Civ6 without hospitals somehow included.

· I think one additional DLC that would be marketable is an alternate leader DLC, bringing an additional alternate leader for many of the original Civs. This could be an opportunity to bring back some classic Civ rulers (Elizabeth, Bismark, Caesar, and Catherine to name a few), while also giving some other Civs new leaders. A third ruler for India would be nice; also, I would love to see Hatsheput leading Egypt, but any Pharaoh would suffice. Throw in a few wonders or other new content and you have a DLC without necessarily having to add more Civs.

· Another DLC that I think would be marketable would be a purely American alternate leader DLC. I’m sure Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt with some newer leaders for the franchise (I’ve always been surprised JFK didn’t make it to Civ with the space focus, John Adams could be a new founding father), and throw in some additional American Wonders and you have another DLC. It’s not the most original concept, but at least I would buy it and there would be a market for it in the States.

· Given that there are several post-colonial countries which have already been included in Civ, I think there is certainly room for some additional DLC for additional countries including Mexico, Argentina, Ireland, and South Africa (among others) which would also marketable.

· I do think that there is enough room for one wonders-specific DLC, especially if there was a focus on more Modern and Atomic wonders. The late game in Civ is often a bit slow (although Civ6 this is less of an issue than prior iterations of Civ, especially with the Gathering Storm future techs), but I do think that few more later wonders (even some Industrial) would make the game more interesting and would have a market among those who have very much enjoyed Civ6.

 

[sen803]

Wonders:

· As I mentioned above, I do think that there is room for additional later wonders. In fact, my biggest disappointment of NFP is that “new wonders” in the September DLC only included two wonders—I was thinking plural would indicate at least three. A few additional later wonders that could be considered include Sagrada Familia, the Empire State Building, the Tokyo Tower, the Oriental Pearl Tower, and Burj Khalifa. Less conventional would be Grand Central Station (or another important train station) and any great airport.

· Given all of the engineering projects and wonders in Civ 6, I am surprised that there hasn’t been a Great Dam Wonder in the game yet. Perhaps they could include the Aswan Dam or the Itaipu Dam rather than the prior Hoover or Three Gorges Dams from before.

· If there was an additional Classical wonder (and given that there are already many classical wonders in the game it’s lower priority than expanding later wonders) I think Ponte du Garde would be a nice one given the engineering focus of the game.

· Other wonders I would like to see added include the Dome of the Rock, to provide more Middle Eastern representation and the Florence Duomo given that there is less Renaissance representation re wonders than some other versions of Civ. Also given that the Globe theatre has been included in every release of Civ, I do think that it should make an appearance in Civ 6. I would also love to see how the art department would depict the Globe.

· The Sistine Chapel has also been included as a wonder in every iteration of Civ. I understand why it hasn’t been included in Civ 6 given that it isn’t really magnificent from the exterior, and the wonders have all included a very nice artistic representation. However, I do wonder if there is a way to also include the Sistine Chapel as a wonder, and not simply as a work of art. Although St. Peter’s and the Sistine Chapel are not one entity, it might be interesting to have St. Peter’s as a wonder, which produces three great works that are the Sistine Chapel/the Last Judgment/and Pieta (in addition to another trait, such as great works of art produce great artist points).




Great People:


· The addition of the great people in the Babylon patch was fantastic and one of my favorite changes to the main game in NFP. However, I think there is still some room for some additional great people, particularly Great Scientists, as I have found that I am still often 2 eras ahead in accumulating points for great scientists.

· Given the Copernicus featured so prominently in multiple versions of Civ, I am surprised that he is not included as a great scientist.

· It would be nice to have some Great Engineers who could rush districts, rather than wonders.


City-States:


· If Italy does not make it into Civ6 (which is looking increasingly likely) then it would be nice to have a catch-up of the Italian city-states, which were actual city states. At least Florence and Milan, if not Siena, Genoa etc.

· Likewise if Morocco does not make it into Civ6, then it would be nice to have some additional Moroccan city-states other than Fez.

There is a fairly long list of important cities in the world (Dublin, Prague, Vienna, Kiev, Cape Town, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Manila to name a few) many of which were included in Civ5, that may be worth considering including in future DLC if those countries do not get included a separate Civ. I suspect some of these were not included earlier as the developers were debating which would become an actual Civ, but would be nice additions to the game and would also potentially expand the market of the game.

 

[sen803]

Districts:

· I think the aerodrome district is very underpowered and I rarely build more than two, which is not accurate given that every major city has an airport, and so I think the yields of an aerodrome should be significant enough that you want to build it in most cities. I think it would be nice to have an international airport as a third building in the district (and could just upgrade the current airport since the district doesn’t really have room artistically for another building), which provides additional trade routes and increases tourism. It would also be nice if the international airport adds food to a city. I also think that areodomes should be impacted by commercial city-states and get the same benefits as harbors and commercial hubs.


Buildings:

· Although the developers have been clearly most interested in creating buildings that can be visualized in the districts etc, I think some additional city center buildings could be created without the need for artistic representation—such as a mass transit system, recycling centers etc. I am actually very surprised that recycling centers didn’t make it into Gathering Storm.

· See my comments above re health, but I do think that hospitals should somehow be incorporated into the city center if there isn’t a medical district at some point.

· The legal system has also been conspicuously absent from Civ 6. If we don’t get any legal system buildings in NFP, I do think at least the courthouse could be a city center building, perhaps related to social policies (for example a free wildcard policy for the first four courthouses or something along that line).


Units

· This is also not original but an industrial era melee unit between musketmen and infantry would be quite key.

· I am also surprised that the Trebuchet hasn’t made it into the game for the same reason. I remember when the Trebuchet came out during Civ3 Conquests and I wasn’t a fan at the time. However, with time I have found its uses particularly as I engage in most warfare in the middle ages, and I would like to see the Trebuchet incorporated into Civ6.

· I am surprised that Civ6 has not found a way to include longbowmen, which is historically been important in the Civ franchise. If the developers don’t want to make additional changes to England, perhaps they can add another Welch city-state and make it the unique unit? Likewise re France and the Musketeers, perhaps it could be introduced if Louis XIV was an alternate leader?


Natural Disasters:


· Given how important Mountains and continental divides are to gathering storm, I think it would be interesting to include earthquakes as another natural disaster.

 

[sen803]

Improvements

· There are two improvements from Civ3 which I actually think would be nice to reintroduce into Civ6. One is the outpost, which I think could be useful for visualizing key areas. The other is a trading post, for claiming a resource that is not in your territory.


Miscellaneous:

Although observatories have been a bit overemphasized in prior versions of Civ, it might be nice to have a modern observatory as an improvement for mountains, or maybe for Volcanoes? An alternative would be for an observatory to be a district that can be built on Volcanoes. It could add to the science yields of Volcano eruptions.

 

[sen803]

Balance Changes for future patches:


Railroads:

· This is certainly not an original suggestion, but railroads still remain underpowered and very tedious, and I think fixing railroads should be a top priority for polishing the game.

· The main problem is that their carbon emissions are high, and their movement reduction and increase in gold for trade routes is too low, so I don’t really end up building many. Sometimes I only build a single railroad between cities for the era score.

· One way to improve this would be to scale up railroads by era (similar to how roads are scaled by era), with each sequential era being cleaner, faster, and more profitable. I don’t disagree with making industrial era railroads a bit clunky, but certainly by the modern era they should significantly improve movement.

· Also, creating railroads is very tedious. It would be nice if there was a way to automatically tell a military engineer to create a railroad to a certain city.


World Congress


· I think that the recent patches have improved the World Congress, but it still some rebalancing, which I think should be another top priority for polishing the game.

· First, I seem to get the same proposals recurrently, including in the same game. I do personally enjoy the randomness of the proposals, but when I get the culture bomb proposal three times in the same game, it is a bit repetitive.

· Second, I actually think that the World Congress would be more fun if it met more often. Even every 25 turns would be more interesting.

· I think that the benefits of emergencies are still significantly underpowered (even compared to R/F where they were actually pretty good)—I’ll go to war for a large sum of gold or another significant reward, but not for 100 diplomatic favor. This is particularly true in the late game when I am often generating that much in a few turns. Also, I think that the benefits of emergencies should be scaled by era, and it would be more interesting if there were a few different possibilities for the rewards of a given emergency and the ones that are selected are random.

· I also think that the Competition bonuses are very weak, largely because the rewards are quite meager and unoriginal. I have little incentive to allocate the production of cities to these projects, and I just passively accrue the points from great people etc. This is particularly true for the World’s Fair and the World Games, both of which were among my favorite competitions in Civ5, and I really don’t pursue in Civ6. Winning them barely impacts the game, and coming in the next tiers of 100 or 50 diplomatic favor is not of much use.

· It would be nice if the World Congress could broker peace between certain Civs or Civ/City-states. For example I recently played a game where Canada and Kongo stayed at war for much of the game and it would have been nice to have had a proposal after so many turns of their war (say 30 turns or more) for us to vote on either some type of economic sanction or actually getting them to sign peace.

· On a related note, while I do like the Diplomatic Quarter, I think the Diplomatic Victories have become too easy; unfortunately I am planning on turning Diplomatic Victory off soon b/c of the number of times I’ve had premature victory . The script for winning is send a lot of envoys to city states (which is even easier with the DQ), don’t capture any other original capitals, and build a few key wonders (including Hungarian Parliament) and you’ll almost certainly have enough Diplomatic Favor to win some key votes in the World Congress. I personally think that there are too many Wonders which have Diplomatic Victory points, and four points from the Statue of Liberty is quite a few—even as an American I think that is too many. It would be also more random if only one of the two proposals from each World Congress generated a diplomatic victory point and it was random which one did so.

 

[sen803]

Civs:

· Babylon is a very interesting Civ to play, but I think they should only unlock a tech from the boost when the prerequisites have been satisfied. (For example you only get mass production when you’ve build a lumbar mill and gotten all the classical/middle ages techs before mass production).

· Matthias is better balanced after the adjustments, but I think that it would be more historically accurate if some of his city-state benefits only apply to city-states following the same religion as Hungary.

· I think that the Eagle Warrior should be a replacement for the Swordsman rather than the Warrior.

· It would be nice if the Dutch had access to Windmills earlier than others and if there was a unique art for an earlier windmill.


Wonders:

· I am not sure why Machu Picchu is a late classical wonder when it really should be a late Middle Ages era wonder, similar to the other Mesoamerican wonders.

· I think St. Basil’s Cathedral should have some type of tundra requirement.

· I think that the Statue of Zeus should have some great general points.

· While I know that the map generation was somewhat modified so that there would be more slots for the Golden Gate Bridge, I did find on my most recent map (Pangea) that there was not a single slot for the Golden Gate Bridge.

· I think that Mont St. Michel should have a coast requirement.



Improvements:


· I think that the pasture remains a bit underpowered and should receive an additional production either in the Classical or Middle Ages.

· I think that lumbar mills on jungle are a bit overpowered, and should have a lower tile yield compared to woods

· I think it would be nice if forts could be built earlier. I would put them as an improvement that comes in the late middle-ages (probably with Castles), but then scale their defensive bonus with certain advances (i.e. Siege tactics, steel).

· I think that there should be an era score for building the first ski resort. Also, I think that they need a little bit of rebalancing. I think similar to how the Cahokia mounds only provide bonuses based on the number you have in a given city, likewise you should only get an amenity from the first ski lodge in that city. As it stands, it is too easy to completely mitigate unhappiness in the atomic era by simply building ski resorts everywhere.

· I do think that the city park should have additional Amenities; it’s an improvement that actually is in most cities, but I rarely build any in the game.

 

[sen803]

Districts:

· I think commercial hubs would be stronger and more fun to place if they had some type of adjacency bonuses for luxury resources.

· The Dam district remains underpowered, especially since the flood tiles can have high yields, and I find I only build Dams very selectively. It would be nice if the Dam would provide additional amenities given the changes in baseline amenities recently. Also, I think the hydroelectric plant should provide some of the similar benefits as plants in the industrial zone (some small amount of additional production as well as Great Engineer points).

· I think the cultural output of Ferris Wheels is quite generous—I would reduce it to 1.

· I am not sure I entirely understand the rationale for the shipyard improving the production of unimproved tiles? It would make more sense if it was the other way around.

· I think industrial zones got nicely modified with the patches. However, two additional changes that I would make are having factories provide housing and getting adjacency bonuses from green power plants (solar, wind, geothermal).



Natural Wonders:


· I think it would be nice if natural wonders would scale by era. Personally, I only settle by natural wonders in the ancient and classical eras, since most natural wonders only have mediocre yields compared to some other tile improvements in later eras.




City States:

· One feature that I do miss from Civ5 is the ability to gift units to city-states. I do think that has its limited uses, particularly when a Civ ally attacks a city state that you are also Suzerain of, and can’t go to war with that Civ.

· I also think it would be useful if the city states would be more aggressive with razing AI cities, and if the AI city-state military units were a little more coordinated. I’ve seen the AI units tend to wander almost randomly and have units right outside an AI city that I’ve completely bombarded to no defense, but the city-state units only sometimes actually attack the city.



Great People:


· While I think that the increase in the price of great people one era ahead makes sense, I think that the increase in the price of those two eras ahead is a bit steep.

· I think Magellan the great person should just increase movement for all naval units by 1 point. Most of the changes to great admirals last year were fantastic! However, I typically have all of the naval luxuries, so I don’t find that bonus to be particularly useful.

· I’ve noticed that the AI could be improved is if they actually used the great people that they collect. I’ve often found that great people who aren’t expended in the corresponding district (i.e. Colaeus and Great Admirals), the AI does not actually use them.

· The recent balance change to Leonardo was a little excessive on culture from Workshops, particularly if you have the Mausoleum.

 

[sen803]

Natural Disasters:


· The natural disasters have been better adjusted with some of the patches. However, I have noticed that some disasters, particularly droughts, floods, hurricanes still tend to recur in the same location.

· I think that tornadoes are a bit overpowered—it might make sense to just have Tornados last a single turn and then disappear.

· I think with the patches that nerfed the dust storms, that they are currently too weak. Given how little the base yields in desert are, I do think that the dust storms can be a (random) game-changer for certain cities.


Miscellaneous:

· It would be really nice when culture bombing an adjacent civilization to get the option of using the culture bomb or not. Sometimes there are great locations for a specific district, but you don’t necessarily want the diplomatic ramifications of culture bombing an adjacent civilization (which seem to last for many turns).

· While the AI’s city placement is much better than it was before, I still do find that about 20% of the time I have no idea why the AI selected a particular spot to settle.

· Some artifacts still arise from the wrong era. I’ve seen artifacts from the Industrial era of a civ—which got conquered in the Classical era.

· I understand the thought of dichotomizing art and archeology museums, but I also find it somewhat limiting. It would be nice if a themed museum allowed you to build a extension of the other type (ie a themed art museum allowed you to build an archeological extension), but once you build the extension you cannot move the themed works. I often find that there are a large number of unused archeology sites in a game, and I haven’t found that the AI is as proactive about archeology, so it would be nice to somehow use all of the sites that arise.

· I think that the technologies that are boosted by barbarian establishments should be limited to the Middle Ages. I received a boost to nuclear fusion from clearing an encampment as Assyria, but even as other players I have received boosts to industrial and modern technologies from finding a random unclaimed goody hut on an island.

· I also think that the Gold that you get from a Barbarian camp should scale by era.

· I think it would be nice if the start biases of each Civ were listed in Civilopedia.

· I think units should also be able to steal great works (both relics and works of art) when pillaging a tile.

· The grievance system is a great addition and an interesting concept. However, the grievances as they are currently implemented decay a bit too fast particularly regarding religion. Historically, grievances from wars tend to decay over a few generations, but religious grievances may last for centuries. The current grievance system in Civ6 has the opposite emphasis.

· Also the timing of the negative impact of some factors on diplomacy (ie culture bombing, denouncing etc) tend to stay around for too long.

· I have a bit of a problem with the embarkation being so easy in Civ 6. I think that the Civ3 version of requiring transport ships to allow land units to travel on the sea is more realistic—it seems a bit odd when swordsmen just embark and start traveling on the coast. Although this basic concept is not going to change in Civ 6 (although I do think it should be rethought for Civ7), I think there are a few changes that could make it more realistic. I think builders should only be able to embark onto the tiles that are part of a given city’s borders. I think there should also be some type of penalty for land units that are embarked other than defense, as you can do quite a bit of exploring with just land units. Perhaps there could be a small chance that each turn an embarked unit without a naval escort may sink (with that chance decreasing with each era)?

· I am among those who enjoys the more historically accurate parts of Civ, and so I am less of a fan of the Giant Death Robot. While I do like the future techs and civis and it makes the late game a little more involved, I think it would be worth considering making the Giant Death Robot an optional mode—perhaps in Civ7.