ShadowWarrior
Prince
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2001
- Messages
- 411
Here are some random ideas. The first portion of this thread can be found in one of my response to another thread. I want to post them here again.
First, I think food and hammers should be transferrable among cities, subject to certain limitation of course. That way, cities with surplus food/hammers can transfer some of the excess production to cities that need them.
The specific implementation of this idea will go something like this.
There is going to be a screen divided into three sections.
The left side of the screen will show a list of cities and their corresponding food/hammer production amount. From this screen, we can pick cities, their particular production (hammers or food or both), and the amount of that production that is to be contributed to transfer to other cities.
For example, the left screen will show the following info:
City A - 10 food/16 hammers
City B - 3 food/9 hammers
City C - 4 food/8 hammers
From City A, I have it contribute 2 food/4 hammers for transfer to other cities. From City B, I have it contribute 1 food/1 hammer. I ask nothing of City C for contribution.
The center of the screen will show the total amount of food and hammers being contributed to inter cities transfer. Continuing the above example, the center screen will show 3 food and 5 hammers availabe for transfer to other cities.
The right side of the screen is where I can select cities that will recieve the transfer. I designate City C as the recipients of the 3 food and 5 hammers.
There will be limiting factors of course. Maintenace cost increases with size of transfer. Maintenance cost is 1 gold, for example, for every 3 food transferred, and 2 gold for every 6 food transferred. The numbers I used are arbitrary. I'll let the designers determine the exact numbers.
I like to see the ability to exploit landtiles that are not within any city raidus. We should have the ability to get settlers to build a village on one of those landtiles outside of any city raidus but within the empire boarder. The village will produce hammers and food. These hammers and food will automatically go onto the center screen which I have previously said will show the available quantities of food/hammers available for transfer to other cities.
Continuing the above example, the center screen showed 3 food and 5 hammers. Lets say I build a village and now this village produces 2 food and 1 hammer. The center screen will now show 5 food and 6 hammers.
Since maintenace cost increases with size of food/hammer transfer, players will not abuse the village feature since the more village they built, the greater the amount of production transfer taking place, which will eventually bite into the gold revenue. We can also make it quite costly to built a village. For example, a combo of 1 settler and 2 workers are needed for a village to be built.
Regarding espionage, I like to recommend some minor changes. I like the idea of accumulating espionage points, and expending the points when conducting missions. It is the particular missions that I take issues with.
I think we should have the ability not to steal technologies from rival civs, but rather, we should be able to steal "beakers". We have the option of expending espionage points to steal a one time lump sum amount of beakers from a civ, or we can choose to steal beakers on a per turn basis. In another word, for the right amount of espionage points, we can choose to, say, get 5 additional beakers from a rival civ each turn.
We can also expend espionage to influence foreign civ's perception toward another civ or towards us. For example, I am playing as China, and I use spy to get Persia, which is aggressive particularly towards me, to like me better to reduce the probability of invading me. Or maybe I want to wage a war against Persia, and I want to enlist the help of England who is neutral towards Persia. I can use spy to influence English foreign policy towards Persia so that England dislike Persia to the point that it becomes easier for me to bribe England into warring on Persia.
We can also use spy to cause unhappiness among the foreign civ's population (I think this feature already exists) to reduce their productivity.
In the area of military, we can use spy to temporarily reduce the hit points of enemy units. Lets say I have three enemy units coming my way. Then I send a spy to the hex where the enemy unit is located. The spy will execute his mission, and that particular enemy unit, which used to have 10 hit points, now only has 7. This will be good for, say, three turns only.
We can use spy to sabotage production. This already exists in Civ IV. I mention it to show that I am for this option.
If great people still exist in Civ V, we can get spy to sabotage great people points a rival civ has accumulated.
Regarding military, I hope designers will seriously reconsider limiting one military unit to each hex. However, I am okay with having an upper cap on the number of military units that each hex can have as long as the upper cap is greater than at least 3 or 4. So each hex can have no more than, lets say, 6 military units. Certain civ may have special advantage and get to have 8 units instead of just 6. Some tech when discovered will increase the amount of units/hex by 2 (or whatever the number designers see fit).
All barbarian cities should become city-state when the near by civilizations enter middle age (or Renaissance age, but shouldn't be later than that).
Terrorists can act like ancient era barbarians, but in the industrial/modern era.
Regarding map, I hope the location of terrain types can be more realistic. For example, I dont' think its realistic to have desert terrain near the ocean coast. But this is a very minor issue that I don't care that much about.
Future tech should have some benefit. For example, future tech 1 will make give one extra happy citizen in each city. Future tech 2 will increase the amount of gold revenue by 10 percent. Future tech 3 will give one additional hit points for all type of gunpowdered units. Civ games don't usually last long enough for future tech to play a significant role even if each future tech has some practical benefits. So again, I don't care that much about it, although it would be a nice addition to have.
We should have the ability to grow forests once we have the needed technology. But there are two limiting conditions. First, the worker who grow forest will need to spend a long time to grow that forest (how about 10 turns?). Second, there must be forests in an adjacent hex in order for one to grow forest.
I think when a civilization in a game has reached modern age and has riflemen, the most backwarded civilization that is still in middle age should be abel to build riflemen too. But their riflemen will have sufficiently reduced hit points to make a difference in battle. This is only fair. More generally speaking, a relatively low tech civ should be able to produce improvements, and military units that a more advanced civ already can produce. But the quality of those improvements and military units are sufficiently bad that it will make a difference. Alternatively, the maintenace cost will be higher.
Lets say I am China and I am invading Russia. Russia's empire is geographically divided into west and east. The western portion of the empire is all grassland. a huge insurmountable mountain divides the empire. The rest of Russian empire lies to the east of that mountain. Should I capture most of the cities including the capital city, which is located in the west, then the whole of western portion of the empire automatically comes under my control. I don'tn eed to go capture every single city that remains in the west (espionage may make it even easier), and the landtiles surrounding those cities in the west will be under my control also, not just the cities themselves. But the whoe eastern portion of the empire may be left intact.
What I am saying is that when an empire is significantly large that it encompasses two more more geographical regions, I should be able to capture one or two key cities in one region and then automatically control that entire region. Espionage can reduce the number of cities I need to take to gain control of the whole region. Lets say before espionage mission, I need to capture 3/5 cities to gain control of the remaining 2 cities, espionage mission when executed successfully, will reduce the needed number down to just 2. The exact formula to determine one constitute a geographical region, and such and such will be left to designer's discretion.
First, I think food and hammers should be transferrable among cities, subject to certain limitation of course. That way, cities with surplus food/hammers can transfer some of the excess production to cities that need them.
The specific implementation of this idea will go something like this.
There is going to be a screen divided into three sections.
The left side of the screen will show a list of cities and their corresponding food/hammer production amount. From this screen, we can pick cities, their particular production (hammers or food or both), and the amount of that production that is to be contributed to transfer to other cities.
For example, the left screen will show the following info:
City A - 10 food/16 hammers
City B - 3 food/9 hammers
City C - 4 food/8 hammers
From City A, I have it contribute 2 food/4 hammers for transfer to other cities. From City B, I have it contribute 1 food/1 hammer. I ask nothing of City C for contribution.
The center of the screen will show the total amount of food and hammers being contributed to inter cities transfer. Continuing the above example, the center screen will show 3 food and 5 hammers availabe for transfer to other cities.
The right side of the screen is where I can select cities that will recieve the transfer. I designate City C as the recipients of the 3 food and 5 hammers.
There will be limiting factors of course. Maintenace cost increases with size of transfer. Maintenance cost is 1 gold, for example, for every 3 food transferred, and 2 gold for every 6 food transferred. The numbers I used are arbitrary. I'll let the designers determine the exact numbers.
I like to see the ability to exploit landtiles that are not within any city raidus. We should have the ability to get settlers to build a village on one of those landtiles outside of any city raidus but within the empire boarder. The village will produce hammers and food. These hammers and food will automatically go onto the center screen which I have previously said will show the available quantities of food/hammers available for transfer to other cities.
Continuing the above example, the center screen showed 3 food and 5 hammers. Lets say I build a village and now this village produces 2 food and 1 hammer. The center screen will now show 5 food and 6 hammers.
Since maintenace cost increases with size of food/hammer transfer, players will not abuse the village feature since the more village they built, the greater the amount of production transfer taking place, which will eventually bite into the gold revenue. We can also make it quite costly to built a village. For example, a combo of 1 settler and 2 workers are needed for a village to be built.
Regarding espionage, I like to recommend some minor changes. I like the idea of accumulating espionage points, and expending the points when conducting missions. It is the particular missions that I take issues with.
I think we should have the ability not to steal technologies from rival civs, but rather, we should be able to steal "beakers". We have the option of expending espionage points to steal a one time lump sum amount of beakers from a civ, or we can choose to steal beakers on a per turn basis. In another word, for the right amount of espionage points, we can choose to, say, get 5 additional beakers from a rival civ each turn.
We can also expend espionage to influence foreign civ's perception toward another civ or towards us. For example, I am playing as China, and I use spy to get Persia, which is aggressive particularly towards me, to like me better to reduce the probability of invading me. Or maybe I want to wage a war against Persia, and I want to enlist the help of England who is neutral towards Persia. I can use spy to influence English foreign policy towards Persia so that England dislike Persia to the point that it becomes easier for me to bribe England into warring on Persia.
We can also use spy to cause unhappiness among the foreign civ's population (I think this feature already exists) to reduce their productivity.
In the area of military, we can use spy to temporarily reduce the hit points of enemy units. Lets say I have three enemy units coming my way. Then I send a spy to the hex where the enemy unit is located. The spy will execute his mission, and that particular enemy unit, which used to have 10 hit points, now only has 7. This will be good for, say, three turns only.
We can use spy to sabotage production. This already exists in Civ IV. I mention it to show that I am for this option.
If great people still exist in Civ V, we can get spy to sabotage great people points a rival civ has accumulated.
Regarding military, I hope designers will seriously reconsider limiting one military unit to each hex. However, I am okay with having an upper cap on the number of military units that each hex can have as long as the upper cap is greater than at least 3 or 4. So each hex can have no more than, lets say, 6 military units. Certain civ may have special advantage and get to have 8 units instead of just 6. Some tech when discovered will increase the amount of units/hex by 2 (or whatever the number designers see fit).
All barbarian cities should become city-state when the near by civilizations enter middle age (or Renaissance age, but shouldn't be later than that).
Terrorists can act like ancient era barbarians, but in the industrial/modern era.
Regarding map, I hope the location of terrain types can be more realistic. For example, I dont' think its realistic to have desert terrain near the ocean coast. But this is a very minor issue that I don't care that much about.
Future tech should have some benefit. For example, future tech 1 will make give one extra happy citizen in each city. Future tech 2 will increase the amount of gold revenue by 10 percent. Future tech 3 will give one additional hit points for all type of gunpowdered units. Civ games don't usually last long enough for future tech to play a significant role even if each future tech has some practical benefits. So again, I don't care that much about it, although it would be a nice addition to have.
We should have the ability to grow forests once we have the needed technology. But there are two limiting conditions. First, the worker who grow forest will need to spend a long time to grow that forest (how about 10 turns?). Second, there must be forests in an adjacent hex in order for one to grow forest.
I think when a civilization in a game has reached modern age and has riflemen, the most backwarded civilization that is still in middle age should be abel to build riflemen too. But their riflemen will have sufficiently reduced hit points to make a difference in battle. This is only fair. More generally speaking, a relatively low tech civ should be able to produce improvements, and military units that a more advanced civ already can produce. But the quality of those improvements and military units are sufficiently bad that it will make a difference. Alternatively, the maintenace cost will be higher.
Lets say I am China and I am invading Russia. Russia's empire is geographically divided into west and east. The western portion of the empire is all grassland. a huge insurmountable mountain divides the empire. The rest of Russian empire lies to the east of that mountain. Should I capture most of the cities including the capital city, which is located in the west, then the whole of western portion of the empire automatically comes under my control. I don'tn eed to go capture every single city that remains in the west (espionage may make it even easier), and the landtiles surrounding those cities in the west will be under my control also, not just the cities themselves. But the whoe eastern portion of the empire may be left intact.
What I am saying is that when an empire is significantly large that it encompasses two more more geographical regions, I should be able to capture one or two key cities in one region and then automatically control that entire region. Espionage can reduce the number of cities I need to take to gain control of the whole region. Lets say before espionage mission, I need to capture 3/5 cities to gain control of the remaining 2 cities, espionage mission when executed successfully, will reduce the needed number down to just 2. The exact formula to determine one constitute a geographical region, and such and such will be left to designer's discretion.
