Suggestions and Requests

[phoenixfire7]

I'm not sure how viable this is but I think it would be cool if different leaders had different effects like in normal civ 4 but slightly different. The effects could be minor bonuses like a free specialist in the capital or a tiny increase in commerce from trade routes or corporations or something like 1 extra production in all cities or 5% reduction of production cost on military units

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

2 extra production in all cities

That alone would instantly be in the top 3 of Vanilla traits.

 

[phoenixfire7]

I edited it to be 1 instead

 

[Caesar Augustus]

So I was playing Russia recently and, despite having around 30 cities, I noticed that only two or three of them weren't on rivers (and those had been built by the AI or pre-placed on the map), and hence they all built hydroelectric plants as soon as the tech was unlocked. Obviously this was great for me, but it didn't strike me as particularly historically accurate. Like, this is the same column that unlocks the Manhattan Project, Bombers, the Pentagon, and Graceland, and here I am instantly adopting a fully green energy grid. It also has some suspect gameplay effects. It essentially obsoleted Nuclear Power before I even unlocked it (let alone solar), made my newly built Public Transportation useless in all but Moscow itself (and my other cities weren't tiny either, mostly around 20 size in my core and 12-15 outside of it), and makes the Itaipu Dam kind of redundant (if most of your cities can build a hydro plant in 2 or 3 turns, why spend 20 in a major city for the same effect to kick in way slower?). And this is not limited to Russia; nearly every city in China, SE Asia, and India is on a river, as well as most good city sites worldwide.

Now, I'm not going to suggest eliminating hydroelectric altogether (it was one of the first big sources of power, and remains by far the largest source of green energy in the world), but I think tweaking its availability so that it's not supplying 80% of the world's power is reasonable. As a band-aid I suggest making it so that either A) Hydro plants require the city to be on a hill, or B) Hydro plants require a peak in the city radius. This represents the elevation change required for efficient hydroelectric generation, and gets rid of the most egregiously problematic locations (like Alexandria and Amsterdam, for example) As a permanent solution, I'd suggest, within the context of the map remake, creating a new type of river (named the Gorge, perhaps), which is required for hydro plants.

 

[Steb]

Now, I'm not going to suggest eliminating hydroelectric altogether (it was one of the first big sources of power, and remains by far the largest source of green energy in the world), but I think tweaking its availability so that it's not supplying 80% of the world's power is reasonable. As a band-aid I suggest making it so that either A) Hydro plants require the city to be on a hill, or B) Hydro plants require a peak in the city radius. This represents the elevation change required for efficient hydroelectric generation, and gets rid of the most egregiously problematic locations (like Alexandria and Amsterdam, for example) As a permanent solution, I'd suggest, within the context of the map remake, creating a new type of river (named the Gorge, perhaps), which is required for hydro plants.

I agree that hydro power is too easy to get in most places, but I'm not sure about the best way to remedy this. The use of terrain for elevation makes sense, but may have unintended effects. For instance, the place I live in, Quebec, produces something like 97% of its electric power from hydro, but it has virtually no mountains; its got plenty of hilly terrain though. I'm guessing mountains are relevant for a place like Norway. And then a place like Aswan has neither hills nor mountain, but the Aswan dam is super important. The problem is that terrain elevation is not quite well captured by the map engine.

I seem to recall rivers were too hardcoded into the game to allow for the modding of different river types.

 

[MechatronicJazz]

This would be a bit clunky, but maybe we could limit hydro dams to a certain number per civ, or 1 per x cities? It would represent the difficulties on cost and terrain that limit use of hydro dams everywhere, without actually limiting which cities could build them. The limit could even be removed at a later tech if that makes sense.

 

[trevor]

Could power be a numerical value instead of just a simple yes/no? So certain plants would provide more power than others while buildings, pop points & certain specialists would require power themselves? This could also mean that plants would co-exist (which would be realistic) & that their minuses would be duplicative. One would still gain a benefit from building cleaner power plants (more power units produced with less pollution/unhealth) but older plants would still be functional. This would also level the playing field between coal & hydro/nuke/solar as well as allow for new types of power plants like oil/gas, geothermal, waste-to-energy, wind, wave & the like.

Would this be too much micromanagement?

 

[Caesar Augustus]

I agree that hydro power is too easy to get in most places, but I'm not sure about the best way to remedy this. The use of terrain for elevation makes sense, but may have unintended effects. For instance, the place I live in, Quebec, produces something like 97% of its electric power from hydro, but it has virtually no mountains; its got plenty of hilly terrain though. I'm guessing mountains are relevant for a place like Norway. And then a place like Aswan has neither hills nor mountain, but the Aswan dam is super important. The problem is that terrain elevation is not quite well captured by the map engine.

I seem to recall rivers were too hardcoded into the game to allow for the modding of different river types.

An alternative idea I had was to introduce some sort of drawback to using hydropower. Maybe it could reduce the commerce from river tiles (on the idea that a dammed river is less navigable for trade)? Or food (lots of poorly managed hydro installations have had drastic impacts on wildlife)? A kind of crazy one would be having a random river tile changed into a low-yield reservoir tile, but I can imagine the AI getting screwed over hard by something like that. That said, I would still bet on the unintended effects of reducing access to hydro power being less impactful than the intended, positive effects of doing so. Like, I think a Canada that ends up using a mix of hydro, nuclear, and coal (or makes a run at Itaipu) is a better game experience than one that puts hydro everywhere by default, even if the power distribution isn't entirely accurate geographically. Oh and at least in the current map there are some peaks in southern Egypt that would totally allow Aswan if we went with the peak requirement.

I also recalled hearing that modding rivers that way was a big ask, but I figured I'd throw it out there as the best solution I could think of.

 

[merijn_v1]

I think it would make some sense if city population also consumes power, or at least during the modern era. After the discovery of Electronics (or Computers if Electronics is too early), the power consumption of a city increases by 1 to represent the power consumption of the inhabitants. The power consumption could also be something like 1 power consumed for every 10 population or something along those lines.

Another idea is that, after the discovery of Electronics or Computers, cities without power get angry if they do not have power. I was thinking of something like half of the population gets angry and "We demand power in the city". I'm not sure if I fully support this idea myself, but let's throw it up anyway.

 

[Leoreth]

I have been thinking about this problem lately, including river differentiation. Not bothered to make a thread about it yet. More to come later.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

I think it would make some sense if city population also consumes power, or at least during the modern era. After the discovery of Electronics (or Computers if Electronics is too early), the power consumption of a city increases by 1 to represent the power consumption of the inhabitants. The power consumption could also be something like 1 power consumed for every 10 population or something along those lines.

How about a rework of the Electric Grid Building? Instead of a flat +10% Commerce have it grant +1 Commerce or +1% Commerce for every pop, with power consumption increasing accordingly.

 

[Seakin]

Some thoughts on Eurasian nomads

Had an idea, regarding the turks and mongolia, to be able to move there core around in there historical regions by moving the capital, to represent the different succsesion states/Dynasties/countries better.

e.g. Ghaznavids/Ghurids/Aq Qoyunlu/Qara Qoyunlu
Golden Horde/Tshagatai/Timurids/Il Khanat/Yuan

In case of the turks it would also match a bit with there uhv of moving there capital and get their core away from the coming mongols to survive a bit longer in persia/mesopotamia.

Potentially the mongol move could be acompanied with losing some of the other parts of the empire to represent the fractioning of the empire.

In general i would like the idea of an nomadic/half nomadic civ that moves a bit around the map. (huns/Xiongnu)
But it seems hard to implement a civilization without or with moving cities in civ 4.

Maybe a start outside of your core and than forced to settle or conquere it first(magyars into hungary?) without a flip, would be an option, thouge it seems not to interessting and bit to luck dependent for the begining of your game.l

 

[Louis the XIV]

In Dawn of Civilization there is one minor thing missing (or major depending how you view the game), the CRUSADES are missing! In all the games I played (over 100)
only once has Germany conquered Sur and Jerusalem in 1180-90 ad, and lost them to the Turks 100 years later. Couldn't there be an Option in the Pope voting that Lead Crusades to Jerusalem or something? Like in RFC Europe if you know that mod.

 

[Leoreth]

The Apostolic Palace should have the option to declare war on the holy city owner if not Christian (both Catholic and Orthodox holy cities). And you have the HRE UHV.

 

[Louis the XIV]

The Apostolic Palace does have that option but it would be more interesting to create events, like the Trading Company event, about Crusades.

 

[Leoreth]

Why?

 

[Seakin]

I think the crusades are fine within the Papal election/Apostolic Palace.
Tho an issue for me is that the Palace is rarely build by the ai.

I would suggest to:
a) give the ai a greater focus on priests if controling a holy city of state religion without a shrine
b) build it for free on the great shism event (maybe only for the ai)
c) seperate it from the shrine and connect it only to the holy city itself

Edit: d) be able to give holy prophets to other nations/build the shrine without owning it (somewhat representing the financing of it by buying Indulgenc i guess)

 

[BaneFire]

The Apostolic Palace Crusade option if passed should spawn a Crusader army. And it should be a bit more common to pass, something like 1/3 to 2/3 of games.
Why? Because it was important historically. It defined Christian-Muslim relations for centuries if not until today. The Crusades should be a significant threat for a Arab and Turkic game, and potentially even a Mongol one.

 

[BaneFire]

Diplomat/Ambassador unit.
Has the "Commando" ability (can move on foreign roads). Cannot be attacked like spy. Cannot be detected, unlike spy (or it has a very low "detection" rate). Is visible to other players?
Basically, as someone like China it's often beneficial to send spies out to ensure you have permanent contact with certain nations for tech trading. Which is what they did IRL - China sent out many foreign delegations to establish trade routes.
Unfortunately sometimes the spy randomly gets caught and you lose relations, despite the fact you weren't actually spying on them.

In theory the Ambassador unit should still have a "detection" or "capture" rate so that you can't just have permanent contact with a foreign nation for all eternity for free.

 

[Caesar Augustus]

Diplomat/Ambassador unit.
Has the "Commando" ability (can move on foreign roads). Cannot be attacked like spy. Cannot be detected, unlike spy (or it has a very low "detection" rate). Is visible to other players?
Basically, as someone like China it's often beneficial to send spies out to ensure you have permanent contact with certain nations for tech trading. Which is what they did IRL - China sent out many foreign delegations to establish trade routes.
Unfortunately sometimes the spy randomly gets caught and you lose relations, despite the fact you weren't actually spying on them.

In theory the Ambassador unit should still have a "detection" or "capture" rate so that you can't just have permanent contact with a foreign nation for all eternity for free.

Could be a limited unit like missionaries so you have to pick and choose who you try to keep contact with. If possible the limit could start really low, maybe just 1, but be increased by later game techs or civics. They should also be vulnerable to barbs and natives... maybe even be auto-destroyed or returned to your territory by independents so that relations break when the civ they're based in collapses.