Next Expansion

[GIO888]

I'd just like the memory leak nixed once and for all.

And with diplomacy so groovy in CIV4, taking an enemy capitol and setting off civil war like in CIV1 would be my only real whishlist item!

 

[grumbler]

Information about the next expansion has been scarce so far. There were two posts by Jon Schafer that indicate that they plan on easying merging mods and improving the GUI.

There was also a post (that I can't find now), where one Firaxian basically said that where Warlords was about war, the next expansion would focus on the peaceful aspects of CIV.

 

[potto]

I feel that extra units and civs is merely icing.

I would like to see some interesting changes to the core gameplay in the next add on

1) Trading Posts - Most Empires first spread their tentacles via trading posts

the current method of aquiring the rights to resources is unsatisfactory in that you have build a city to let the resources fall in your cultural boundary.

Settlers take too long to generate once an exploration has reveiled a cluster of resources and due to the cost penalty (which is fair enough) of building distant cities it means that distant resources and exploration have limited impact.

A New tech would allow explorers and armed units to create trading posts
these would have a population size cap, but they would grow in relation to how many resources (becoming a colony? Or small town?) they cover and if the resources are used and traded. The trading post would inflict a cultural border its size related to the culture of the mother empire. The Trading post would also be able to be defended. The cost to the treasury will be minimal allowing you to create distant trading posts early in the game

Taking over or destroying Trading Posts however would be more subversive than that of taking cities, it would not always result in a full scale war and you would be able to trade and bargain with them.

Infrastructure for trading posts such as defenses, food and cultural symbols would be generated from resources connected to your nearest city.

At a certain tech level including a time penalty Trading posts can be converted into Cities where by the cost to the treasury will be then felt however the City will then be able to grow and produces its own infrastructure and units.

A Trading Post turning into a City would spark tensions if it were deep in a rivals territory ie War

2) Time Scale of War - Linking Unit creation with production of infrastructure and culture/research means a skewed experience when it comes to war.

Instead of units suddenly going out of date before you have had chance to play with them I propose a different method of unit production. Depending on tech level, resource availability, infrastructure and resource you should be able to arm a proportion of your population on a per City or Empire wide basis using money (less productivity of a City the higher the cost) in a single turn. Offensive units would also be generated this way but perhaps also take longer to generate. So in a single turn you could generate an icon representing 500 archers, 200 pikemen or 50 aircraft available at your disposal. Obviously this would require a tweaking of other aspects such as gold generation, unit cost, defensive capability and a City would be more difficult to attack, maybe the armies would be graphically represented by their size and you could do some basic maneouvers such as surrounding a City and or coming over unseen from hills next to a City, so geography and unit position would have more of an impact. The empahisis will then be more on taking trading towns/captial cities and one or two provincial cities as it did in the real history.

3) Intelligent Tech Tree - At the moment the Tech tree feels a bit aloof to the activity on the ground, a click and forget experience. I would like to see a random element introduced to create tech dead ends and different routes that still contain logic but are different each game. More importantly the routes and techs available for research would be highly connected to the geography of your empire and the resources available, hence why trading posts would be an important addition. If a resource is needed to discover a particular tech is not available then the rest of that tech branch will be invisible. Trading resource or even trade routes to a very friendly civ who has the resource would then open up that tech branch to you.

 

[Lewsir]

Potto, that all sounds pretty cool. Though some of that might have to wait for CIV 5, being fairly major overhauls.

Here's a hopefully simple idea (that I admit I'm stealing from someone on another recent thread - the one on the problem if losing interest in games half way through - with a possible solution being to make it easier to have late-game comebacks), how about adding more victory conditions, in particular one based on the health/happiness of your CIV. That ought to be easy enough to implement, though to make it interesting and challenging might be trickier. A bit like the cultural victory - good for CIVs who have no shot at space race or dominance. Given all the indicators the game tracks anyway (e.g. education, etc.) maybe it could be based on the UN Human Development Index...

 

[Rod]

Hello,

actually I do not need any more features from Firaxis, because people like the Kael-Team (FFH), Rhye (RFC) and Blake (Better AI) doing such a fantastic job, you just have to copy loads of their work and Civ would be the most advanced game product ever.

But what I expect from Firaxis are more animations, more images, simply more graphical stuff (leaderheads, icons, buildings, terrain, features, textures you name it).

Features are more easy to be done by the community because to implement features you need sufficient knowledge of Coding and a huge testing enviroment. All these elements we find on CivFanatics. But for gfx you need the right software .. and this is a very big financial constraint, because nobody privately can afford to buy the Gamebryo tools etc.

So Firaxis has to give us loads and loads of gfx... and of course they always have to streamline and automate the interface. Indeed this I expect from them, because we still face a lot of hazzle in the interface.. just imagine how difficult it is to handle 100 units.. there is lots and lots of room and necessity for improvement.

 

[Lewsir]

Rod I like that, you just reduced Firaxis basically to an art studio. But the point is well taken, if the modders have done so much that they are essentially ahead of Firaxis on gameplay, I hope Firaxis isn't spending huge amounts of effort to play catch-up. I hope they are not too proud to just internalize the best of the modding work, and (importantly) compensate these modders for their hard work.

Anyone have any idea if something like that is happening (or might ever)?

 

[Rod]

That is an interesting thought , but I was merely seeing Firaxis as the Provider of the Platform, where all we are playing on.

I do not aggragate, when I say : Civ IV has a really advanced architecture and they gave us the whole SDK - that is just great, because it is a toolbox full of everything you ever dreamt of.
But whatever you do with Civ it is still Civ. So the point is that if you want to play FFH, RFC or whatever you still need the Platform : Civ IV including Warlords. This is good for Firaxis and it is good for us.

The only thing Firaxis can not give us is the Graphic Engine, because it is not theirs .. unfortunately.

So that is why I am saying that the next expansion should contain the best mods from the community + many many new tools (toys, gimmicks you name it) and improvements in the interface. This is the best combination. Because as community we can not touch the architecture, nor the Graphic Engine .. so we happily leave this to Firaxis

 

[snipperrabbit!!]

OK ! Firaxis must definitly import all the mature UI mods in order to prevent the modders' work to be done and redone after each expansion. It's possible to improve ini settings to which elements you want ingame.

 

[LAnkou]

I don't know if it has been done in any mod, but it would be really nice if when looking at advisors, we could change the sliders and see the immediate effect:

exemples of use:
I'm at war, and i want to manage unhappy face with culture sliders: i go on the general advisor page and play with the culture sliders to get the minimum rioters...
I'm aiming at a cultural victory and i can play with the sliders to have the "Micromanage" the culture output in my three (future) legendary cities.
I'm looking at the scince advisor, clic on a tech in the tech tree (not an immediate one) and with playing with the science slider, i fix the number of turn before some tech can come...


I have always been frustrated to not be able to change the sliders while on any advisors.

Another thing that would be good, is if i clic in the tech tree on a particular tech that i can't reserch right away (beelining to a tech), there are two number of turns showed: the number of turns that the tech will take to research, and the number of turns the tech and all the prerequisites will take. (IE. i'm beelining liberalism and i have to research education: it will show education (5) and liberalism (9 - 14). Is it clear?)

just my two cents

 

[Spocko]

I strongly recommend trying the Better AI mod http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=245. It's not perfect, but it does make a tremendous difference in game play. I can not imagine playing a game without it now.

I second that. Absolutely - check out the Better AI mod.

 

[jkp1187]

1.) I cannot say enough good things about Better AI. By the time a putative third expansion is ready to release, Better AI (if current trends continue) will be awesome. http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=245.

2.) I have a suggestion for a small improvement to naval combat -- adding a 'patrol' function permitting ships to intercept enemy vessels during the enemy's movement phase, making use of ships to intercept amphbious attacks more effective:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=207059

3.) More civs (mainly gravy, but my suggestions include: Ethiopia/Abyssinia (Haile Sellessie), Holland (Wm of Orange), Portugal (Henry), Cherokee (John Ross), Sioux (Sitting Bull), Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh).)

4.) Perhaps a second unique unit/unique building for each civ? (I have always felt that the B-52 should be an American UU, but I digress...) [EDIT: Since someone mentioned it -- give the B-52 a chance to kill units!]

5.) Blind research, as was done in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire (SMAC). For those who don't recall, the player had an option in SMAC to choose blind research. If the option was selected, players would not choose their way along the tech tree, but rather would direct researchers to discover military (for example) or population growth related techs; your 'researchers' would then research techs related to that. (So, for instance, if directed to research military techs, animal husbandry or hunting would be researched instead of masonry or agriculture.) Not saying this has to be a default option, but it would be nice to have it added as a variant. I almost always played with this feature on, since I felt it was more realistic than a leader directing which specific technology to research next.

 

[marioflag]

It would be also fun to have Battleships able to bombard terrain improvements and at the same time making these ships more vulnerable to subs.

About tech trading i would like to see an intermediate option between Tech Trading and Not tech trading which in my opinion are too extreme as solutions.
Blueprints would be good optional feature

 

[Spocko]

It would be also fun to have Battleships able to bombard terrain improvements and at the same time making these ships more vulnerable to subs.

About tech trading i would like to see an intermediate option between Tech Trading and Not tech trading which in my opinion are too extreme as solutions.
Blueprints would be good optional feature

Hmmm. So, the limit could be allowing a civ to accept only one blueprint per tech: once you have the blueprint (which could be a boost in beakers toward a specific tech) purchasing or accepting additional blueprints for that tech would be redundant (and thus, no beaker boost).

 

[Dale]

There was also a post (that I can't find now), where one Firaxian basically said that where Warlords was about war, the next expansion would focus on the peaceful aspects of CIV.

Bummer. I was hoping for a WW2 scenario like they did for Conquests.

 

[Jon Shafer]

You're such a ham.

 

[Danielos]

Next expansion should be called "Civ IV: Resurrection" and will bring back all the nice features that were lost from Civ 1-3, for example:

* PIRATES!!
* Privateers, AEGIS cruisers
* Interesting naval combat
* Resources like seals, peat, saltpeter, rubber
* Missing civs
* High council (Civ 2 style)
* Wonder movies (like in Civ 2)
* civil wars
* Missing buildings and wonders
* disasters and events
* embassies
* SAM-batteries and flak

and the rest I forgot...

Also, add air promotions, more naval promotions and a completely new Near Future-tech section. Also, change eras for leader background and clothing, and change background depending on who is visiting who.

 

[Donny]

I would like the following in an expansion:

* Introduce civil wars, by making at least 2 leaders per civilization maybe.
* Improve the computer AI, the higher levels should be harder because of the AI and limit the "unfair" advantages as much as possible.
* Make AI players treat the human player exactly the same as another computer player in declaring war, demanding tribute, trading technologies,...
* Extra units, buildings, civs, leaders, traits, techs are always nice, but they dont add alot of value to the game imo, only if they really change the gameplay.
* Balance the choises you have to make in the game so that each have their advantages/disadvantages, time or place. Nothing should be "always better".

just my 2 cents.

 

[Onagan]

* More Civilizations; The Netherlands, Austria, Portugal & Poland from Europe, Ethiopia, Kongo, Ashanti from Africa, Vietnam, Srivijaya from Asia, Aboriginals form Oceania, Caral Supe & Chibchas from South America and the Sioux, Cahokia, Cherokee & Iroquois from North America.

* The possibility to kill units with the Jet Fighter.

* Let the Vassal become free on your command.

* Raze cities anytime.

* drive religion out of your country.

* AI should forget war & gifts sometime.

 

[kristopherb]

I think it whould be civ4;civil-wars with civil-wars added in and scenarois which is about civil wars.

 

[Antilogic]

Inquisitors would make the game interesting, and all the more interesting if civics like theocracy would cause unhappiness amongst cities with non-state religions.

There have been several lists posted of wanted features, and I'm not going to post mine again (look around in the thread and in other wishlist threads). But my first and foremost want is new civilizations and leaders--give us a dozen civilizations and twice that number of leaders, and I'll be happy.

I think also they said spy missions were being revamped. That's good, because right now they are just really expensive and annoying.