Random Ideas Which Are Not Particularly Drastic In My Opinion

[AnonymousSpeed]

Spoiler The Diplomacy District, the City Center :

City State diplomacy could use some extra work, I don't think most people would disagree with that. It's just a bit odd that it's one of those few things in the game which you can't actually "focus" on, the only way to really boost your envoys (aside from two diplomatic policy slots) is with your government choice, but even then each member of a "tier" of governments always grants the same number of envoy. So...basically, it's just something that happens. And that's sort of bothersome, especially since we have Frederick, whose agenda is that he doesn't like people who interact with City States. But what else am I supposed to do with all these envoys?

So, this first idea is for a pair of city center buildings which are focused on city state diplomacy.

The first unlocks with the Medieval era. It allows the City to train Diplomats, which are moved around like spies, but have different functions. When sent to City States, they act as envoys, but since you can move them around, they're move flexible. If you give up on allying with a City State, you can just move your diplomats out of there and send them somewhere else. It also allows the Diplomatic Mission district project, which grants Envoy points when completed.

The second unlocks in the late/post-industrial era and represents a move towards globalization and collectivism. It could perhaps be called the "Embassy" and provide automatic delegations to other civilizations, probably some other bonuses such as increased envoy points from the Diplomatic Mission project or just envoy points each turn.

Spoiler Reformed Religion :

The second idea is based on the fact that religion is very competitive, to the point where it's the one aspect of the game you will usually ignore at higher difficulties. The Great Prophets just go too fast, you have to focus on getting one and even then it's not guaranteed, so the whole investment could be wasted. Also, Great Prophet Points become very useless very quickly, yet Shrines, Temples, and Holy Sites will be giving you them well past the point when all religions have been founded.

So, this idea postulates that Great Prophets, like other types of Great People, have different effects between them instead of all of them founding religions. There might be some early ones which found religions, but then there might be some with other bonuses in between, allowing civilizations which didn't get up Holy Sites right away to snag a "Found a Religion" Great Prophet later. These Great Prophets could have effects such as allowing you to add beliefs to your religion (rather than doing it through Apostles), generating additional faith (via bonuses, free buildings or flat boosts), providing food or housing as a representation of good works, creating a Relic, triggering an inspiration maybe, plenty of possibilities. I could see it getting very controversial if this were done, though.

Spoiler Reformed Religion, Part 2 :

The religious victory is sort of lame, primarily because spreading your religion militantly isn't that interesting, because religious combat is pretty boring. There are a few possible fixes to this, but what's below is mostly random ideas which would probably not fix much.

• Trade Routes should spread religious pressure again.
• The more faith a city generates, the stronger its religious pressure and resistance to conversion should be.
• Religious units have their own layer (everyone can agree with this, I think)
• Adding some darn variety to their functions. The inquisitor is meant more for home defense, sure, but it's only got +5 strength and only in friendly territory, so it's not that useful and a missionary does defense only a little worse. Apostles only have five more strength than homeland inquisitors though, so the whole things is just samey and kind of a slog. Yeah, 5 combat strength here is the best it's been since Civ4, but it's still not that impressive. There should be a religious unit with a ranged attack, for example, or one with extra movement, one with lesser theological combat ability but who can evangelize cities better, some real rock-paper-scissors type design with the types of units, like you're playing a game of Civ4 again. You're using the same units the whole game, I don't mind if they're a bit more complicated in how they work.
• A "Televangelism" policy of some sort would be fun, you could have Broadcast Towers benefit your religious game. That one's just a thought. A Peace Corp or Foreign Missionaries based Diplomacy card. I don't know, something.