Suggestions for an all encompassing MOD

[bobalot]

I have seen alot of neat mods being made but, in order to make the game more fun it needs the following changes(Which I hope to make, once I learn the skills needed.):

A considerable slowing down of the game, so we can have real ages. At the moment by the time you amass a considerable army, it will probably be out of date. I was hoping for great ages, like the Napoleanic age of warfare.

An overhaul of the tech tree. I can't seem to put my finger on it, but the tech tree seems really sucky to me.

General changes to underpowered/overpowered units.

More civics, alot reviews point out the large amounts of civics and thus many different types of potential government. But in reality, thats not really the case. Take "Environmentalism" for example, who really uses that?

Changes to the civs. Take industrial Civs, its simply too easy for them to grab the early wonders, with their +50% wonder production bonus.

Lower defensive bonuses a bit. Its stupid to have to suicide catapaults all the time to take cities.

And the biggest change would be religion. The current system for religion is garbage in my opinion. In the current state its best to have as many religions as possible in each city, even with a state religion. When you look at history, this was never the case, there was nearly always conflict when this happened.

I propose these changes:
- Negative happiness if a city has a religion different to the state religion (this negative can vary according to the civics)
- Ability to persecute a particular religion, which would remove population or halt the spread of that religion, but also piss off other civs with that religion.
- Ability to attempt to force covert cities over time.
- A general strengthening of the Free Religion civic, to make it actually useable.
- A lessening of these negatives as we approach the modern era.

 

[bobalot]

As well as a overhaul of the culture part of the game.

I think someone else pointed it out well. The game has a good engine, but the game is not all that fun after a while. Expecially as you approach the modern era.

 

[doug2134]

Yea i also hate how when your in the modern era you have still yet to build some primative stuff, maybe make reasearch take longer so you can build each building before a nother building is reaserached.

 

[Napo981]

A considerable slowing down of the game, so we can have real ages. At the moment by the time you amass a considerable army, it will probably be out of date. I was hoping for great ages, like the Napoleanic age of warfare.

Try epic.

But yeah.. it's annoying your army get outdated too fast. Upgrade costs far too much to allow automatic changes.

It's a problem, but can we do otherwise without troubling gameplay?

An overhaul of the tech tree. I can't seem to put my finger on it, but the tech tree seems really sucky to me.

Not so bad...

General changes to underpowered/overpowered units.

Get the gunship a blitzkerg ability!!
Naval units to damage land units.
Revamp nuclear system.
New units : 2 MP modern artillery, trebuchet

More civics, alot reviews point out the large amounts of civics and thus many different types of potential government. But in reality, thats not really the case. Take "Environmentalism" for example, who really uses that?

Changes to the civs. Take industrial Civs, its simply too easy for them to grab the early wonders, with their +50% wonder production bonus.

Depends of your play style. Change your strategy and you'll change your civics . Civ IV system (or SMAC...) represents a big change from civ 3. You customize your civics to your needs, instead of switching from communist to democracy at peace and the inverse for war(civ 3). Even if some patterns of civics seem to be classic i. e. theocracy/vassalge for war and organized religion at peace, much has been done to bring interesting strategic choice in civics. But yeah... environmentalism is pretty useless.

Lower defensive bonuses a bit. Its stupid to have to suicide catapaults all the time to take cities.

The problem is kamikaze catapult, not high city def.

And the biggest change would be religion. The current system for religion is garbage in my opinion. In the current state its best to have as many religions as possible in each city, even with a state religion. When you look at history, this was never the case, there was nearly always conflict when this happened.

I propose these changes:
- Negative happiness if a city has a religion different to the state religion (this negative can vary according to the civics)
- Ability to persecute a particular religion, which would remove population or halt the spread of that religion, but also piss off other civs with that religion.
- Ability to attempt to force covert cities over time.
- A general strengthening of the Free Religion civic, to make it actually useable.
- A lessening of these negatives as we approach the modern era.

I like the idea of having too many religions bringing penalties, specially in the theocracy civic.

 

[BlackMage]

I like the idea, especially the religion and "suicide cat" ones.

The only one I would disagree on is the civics. All of the civics have a purpose, even the narrowest ones like Environmentalism. What I would propose is to revamp what all the civics do, and rearrange their Upkeep.

 

[Gato Loco]

Suicide cats should be easy to eliminate. Just give them 99% retreat to make them reusable after sufficient healing.

Or even better, take away their ability to attack and instead set something up so that if a stack is at least 25% artllery, all other units in the stack get a special temporary promotion called "artillery support" that gives them +20% city attack, collateral damage. A similar idea could possibly work for archers stacked with melee units. I don't know if this is possible but I seem to remember seeing someone in the modding forum talking about temporary promotions.

Another idea would be introducing a siege system where starving a city acually damages the defenders whenever the city shrinks and keeps them from healing until there's a food surplus again. This would give you another way to take cities. It would also probably be very hard to pull off and would also confuse the AI even further.

 

[GenericKen]

I don't agree about an overall religion change, but there should definately be penalties for non-state religions in theocracy and organized religion, to at least give people a reason to run the other options.

 

[Willowmound]

Suicide artillery was a design choice to get away from the Civ3 situation in which you never lost artillery. In Civ3 I'd build a handful of seige weapons in each age while upgrading the ones I aldready had, making for a ridiculous number of modern artillery in the end. Never losing artillery is just not realistic. While the suicide-attack dynamic may not be the best way to solve this problem, merely reverting to the Civ3 style is not a good solution either.

 

[lonestar007]

Few things I have noticed that should be included if not mentioned already:

Put the number of turns until city growth or production finished back on the main page. I recently found a city at stagnant growth with a bar half full. No idea how long it had been this way. Also, my Hagia Sophia and rifleman look the same half-finished, yet are different by almost 40 turns. With more than a few cities, it is silly to have to slide over each one and check all the time. Right now the little bars filling up tell me nothing.

I know it has been mentioned, but we need a drop-down menu or words in the city screen for build orders. My fifteen inch screen or laptop makes these little pictures useless and changing build orders very difficult and annoying.

On the same note, why are there only pictures in the military advisor? Was the game designed for illiterate people? Can we have the leaders name and country to select on this screen as well; it can actually be quite useful. Right now it’s a pain with a lot of little cartoon pictures.

Change religion so there is a reason for me to dislike countries of other religions. Right now they only dislike me, I could care less. In multiplayer, the religion aspect is useless because nobody really cares what religion you are.

The tech tree sucks because it is difficult to grasp and see. In previous civs it was easy to plan your technological advancement. You worked for the tech five steps down the tree as much as for the one you were currently researching. Not so much now. I feel there is little planning involved in technology, just pick the best right now and you will get there eventually. The tech tree might be just as good, but the presentation is very poor, and thus planning very confusing and difficult.

I think that is all for now.

 

[bobalot]

"Suicide artillery was a design choice to get away from the Civ3 situation in which you never lost artillery. In Civ3 I'd build a handful of seige weapons in each age while upgrading the ones I aldready had, making for a ridiculous number of modern artillery in the end. Never losing artillery is just not realistic. While the suicide-attack dynamic may not be the best way to solve this problem, merely reverting to the Civ3 style is not a good solution either."

The thing is artillery was never taken out unless the defenders had artillery, perhaps the "Artillery Duel" from Alpha Centauri could be introduced.

 

[kandalf]

Hey, I just used enviromentalism last game!

 

[Ranos]

I have seen alot of neat mods being made but, in order to make the game more fun it needs the following changes(Which I hope to make, once I learn the skills needed.):

A considerable slowing down of the game, so we can have real ages. At the moment by the time you amass a considerable army, it will probably be out of date. I was hoping for great ages, like the Napoleanic age of warfare.

Epic does slow down the game as mentioned above, but it slows everything down. There are more turns, techs take longer, production takes longer and city growth takes longer. This only works in making the game longer, not allowing the use of all units in all ages. More turns and techs taking longer are definately good and growth could go either way, but production should stay at the same rate as normal speed. This would allow for units being produced and used instead of researching a tech that gives unit A that will work well against unit B, but by the time you have enough of A, your enemy has already researched the tech required for unit C and unit A sucks against unit C.

An overhaul of the tech tree. I can't seem to put my finger on it, but the tech tree seems really sucky to me.

It just seems different because it isn't broken into into eras like Civ 3 was. It confuses some people because they don't understand that if there are multiple arrows pointing to a tech, that means they only need one of those prerequesit techs and the pictures in the upper left of the tech indicate which techs are required.

General changes to underpowered/overpowered units.

The units all seem fine to me. Nothing overpowered, nothing underpowered. There are a couple of units that are just completely useless, IMO, because of their overall traits and/or the availability of other, better units.

More civics, alot reviews point out the large amounts of civics and thus many different types of potential government. But in reality, thats not really the case. Take "Environmentalism" for example, who really uses that?

The number of civics are fine. Environmentalism is a bit useless, but that is the only one that needs to be changed.

Changes to the civs. Take industrial Civs, its simply too easy for them to grab the early wonders, with their +50% wonder production bonus.

Civs are also fine. The industrial trait only gives an early advantage to those civs. Other traits give later benefits, Organized, for example. Other traits are good for the whole game. Its about a combination of diversity and balance that works just fine the way it is. If you can't get the early wonders because of that trait, try changing your playstyle.

Lower defensive bonuses a bit. Its stupid to have to suicide catapaults all the time to take cities.

Defensive bonuses work the way they are supposed to. Siege units suiciding is there because of those same units being overpowered in Civ 3. Take a stack of 15 artillery to a city, bombard and you can attack with your offensive units with no losses. It was far too easy to take cities in Civ 3. This was the way Firaxis came up with to balance out siege units.

And the biggest change would be religion. The current system for religion is garbage in my opinion. In the current state its best to have as many religions as possible in each city, even with a state religion. When you look at history, this was never the case, there was nearly always conflict when this happened.

I propose these changes:
- Negative happiness if a city has a religion different to the state religion (this negative can vary according to the civics)
- Ability to persecute a particular religion, which would remove population or halt the spread of that religion, but also piss off other civs with that religion.
- Ability to attempt to force covert cities over time.
- A general strengthening of the Free Religion civic, to make it actually useable.
- A lessening of these negatives as we approach the modern era.

The current system is good, it just lakcs in depth. In their fear of lawsuits, boycotts and low sales in ceratin areas, Firaxis and 2K didn't make each religion individual like it should be. That would be the first change I'd make to religion. Ethnic cleansing should be a choice to remove a religion from a city. I'm not sure what you mean by "force convert" but spreading your religion is easy as the system exists currently. Free Religion is useable. It is great when going for a cultural victory and adding in the unhappiness for non state religion would make Free Religion a huge civic to have. Negative effects of religion still exist in our time.