The Civ V Expansion Wishlist v2.0

Would Morocco be the Moors? I do agree there should be more Islamic representation than the Ottomans and Arabs.

Basically what I suggested with the Berbers. Though I guess one could call them the Moors, if one wanted to (people tend to have alot more immediate associations to the word 'Moor' than to the word 'Berber'). Anyways Moors is basically just what Europeans used as a collective name for the Arabs and Berbers (though mostly Berbers) who invaded Iberia, and the kingdoms they founded. Though in actuality the Moors were a Berber tribe around Roman times or something, if memory serves me right. Later the word also came to mean 'black' or 'African' (few of the Moors, when we first are calling them that, were black, though there were some, like slave soldiers, and one could argue that the Tuareg, a Berber people, are black), I think in Spain it still does.
 
People have to be careful to not suggest things that aren't in the game (having Quecha replace axemen, for example, is useless since there are no axemen).



Not Alexis? So many cool ones to choose from (although I do agree it would have to be a Greek-oriented leader. Justinian should be out (for a number of reasons, actually)).

For a unique building, Hippodrome (replaces theatre) or Basilica (if there's a Cathedral, replace that. If not there should be!) would seem logical to me.

For a Unique Ability, something should be done to represent the Emperor's perceived closeness with God. The most likely choice would be something involving religious buildings and the Piety branch of social policies. If there isn't a Cathedral, this could be a problem too.

I often like Alexis, among many other emperors. However, how can you really not just say yes to anyone who has the nike name 'The -insert group name here- slayer. Another great nicknamed individual was Nikophorus 'The pale death of the Saracens' Phokas.

As for the civ ability, in another thread someone suggested that court houses (and perhaps this could be extended to other governmental buildings) add culture - to represent the legacy of Justinians law (even though I regard Justinian as a Roman Emperor, rather then a Byzantine proper, the legacy of legalism he left was certainly a central aspect to Byzantine culture and society)

Would Morocco be the Moors? I do agree there should be more Islamic representation than the Ottomans and Arabs.
Pretty much, but I prefer the national name over the term 'Moors', I like 'Berber' better - Moors has some nasty connotations to some with it.
 
Ooh, Code of Justinian, I do like that. Maybe if their UB was a Basilica, it would do enough to represent their religious side.

Regarding the Moors: Iroquois is a Gallicized version of a Huron word that was used to slander the Haudenosaunee (something to do with snakes, I believe). Still, you couldn't call them anything besides Iroquois in a game for a mass audience. Berbers would be a fair compromise, but I do think Moor gives immediate recognition to people of whom we are talking about.
 
Oh, unit additions. More specifically, I'd bring back Marines. Make them cost roughly equivalent to paratroopers with better stats (or cheaper with same stats). Make them basically an upgrade to Infantry with no penalty for attacking from the sea.
 
@ Pouakai: Put 'Byzantium' rather then 'Byzantine'- 'Byzantine' is possessive; something has to come after it, or must refer to a quality of something. 'Byzantium' is a proper noun. ;)
 
Here's some suggestions.

Byzantines:
2nd UU: Varangian Guard (Replaces Longswordsman) Bonus defending?


Vietnam:
UA: Guerilla Warfare (Units get +25% combat bonus in forests and jungles)
1st UU: Annamese Warrior (Replaces Archer) +2 strength
2nd UU: Viet Cong (Replaces Infantry) Increased movement in own terrain
 
Definately wouldn't mind another go at an espionage system. I was a big fan of SMAC's probe teams and wouldn't mind something similar though balancing such a system is always a little difficult.
 
Espionage / Assasins
Revolutions
Religeon
Multiple civilization alliances
Ability to create and edit own social policies
Financial hitmen
Guerilla fighters
Immigration
Massive world events


Biological missiles
chemical missiles
special forces
Satellites
Space to ground missiles
Space to ground lasers
Railgun artillery

My biggest problem with civilization is its way too linear. It follows a certain route that identical to our history. Why should it follow this direction, we should be able to have a different way forward each game, more freedom to govern and discover new technologies. This Civ5 is a dumbed down version of CIV4, with better graphics and less features. Two additions of city states and hex squares is not good enough for a 5th generation of the game.
 
Definately wouldn't mind another go at an espionage system. I was a big fan of SMAC's probe teams and wouldn't mind something similar though balancing such a system is always a little difficult.

Probe teams were far too easy to exploit. I basically used them to steal gold and, then, used that gold to fund other espionage missions against them.

I personally prefer a more basic espionage system starting with scouting abilities (ability to see enemy troops, ability to see what's in a city and what's being produced), then moving onto info about the civ (ability to see research), finally to direct action (ability to incite a riot, ability to sabotage production, and, just as interestingly, ability to steal technology). At the minimum, I'd want the first thing included, then the second, then the third.
 
I really enjoyed the Superspies mod, which allowed spies to get promotions.

I miss Carthage.

I like the idea of mercenary army as a special abillity.
Numidian cav, of course, with some kind of sapping advantage.

I'd prefer a fast elephant to a quinireme as a second UU, but I'd prefer the extra trade route cothon instead. One of the things I enjoy most about Carthage in IV is that it is both a commercial and military power, and therefore a contender for domination and space victories.

Jerusalem would make an interesting city-state.
 
Well, I wanted to represent their naval dominance. I thought about a Cothon giving ships experience points, but a better Trireme seemed to work as well.

Carthaginian Elephants, being African forest Elephants, were smaller than Indian Elephants. In warfare, they had some limited use in the First Punic War and were all but useless in the Second (most died crossing the Alps, a few had limited success in the first couple of battles, and all were dead by Cannae. In addition, they ended up being the reason for Hannibal's defeat at Zama as the Elephants routed and were turned back on his army). For historical reasons, Numidian Cavalry, Libyan Infantry, Balearic Slingers, Quinqueremes, and even Celtic Infantry are all better choices than Elephants, even if Elephants are among their most famous weapons.

For gameplay reasons, there's no place to put an Elephant if the Numidians are cavalry.

EDIT: More city states. Here are some suggestions (part of the goal is to add more ancient city states, part is to offset Korea being made a civ, which would be cool).

Angkor (cultural)
Koninsburg (militaristic)
Tripoli (maritime)
Ur (cultural)
Jerusalem (cultural)
Nineveh (militaristic)
Kabul (militaristic)
Tapei (maritime)

Angkor would be to the replacement of Seoul (East Asian city state that is cultural). Tapei is to keep at least another one of the Four Tigers in the game (I figure it's at least less controversial than Hong Kong, which I assume is a Chinese city). Koninsburg represents the Teutonic Kingdom. It might be a German city, however. I could also use Malta for the Knights Templar instead (probably Maratime, add another militaristic city state). Tripoli would just be cool (Barbary Pirates!) and it adds at least a second African city-state.

Ur is an important notably missing city-state. It could be to add Sumeria as a civ or because they made it part of Babylons city-list. I'd argue it was the definition of the city-state for a long time. Nineveh on other hand wasn't really a city-state, but the capital of the Assyrian Empire (Ashur would be a better choice for a city-state, but I figured Jonah gave Nineveh more celebrity status). Probably the only way to give Assyrians representation.
 
I would chime in with the addition of several more civs (posted on this other topic):

Spain
Unique Unit: Conquistador, replaces knight. Can be built without acess to horses and has an additional radious of vision, thus being an awesome expeditionary force.
Unique Unit: Tercio, replaces musketman. Inmune to city fire, halves damage from bombardement. Ideal for city sieges.
Special ability: Non plus ultra. Cities in the borders of your empire generates 75% less unhappiness. Useful for stablishing remote colonies and / or expanding your empire at the expense of others.

However, I have to admit that the Siglo de Oro special skill sounds awesomesauce in concept... but a little too vainilla (too much similar to the Persian's one) and perhaps too much overpowered. What about a little modification?

Siglo de Oro alternative version: Units gain a +25% combat bonus during golden ages, each 5 turns of golden age your civilization generates a great artist. That way:
1- You have a civ which relies heavily in golden eras without following the Persian model, adding variety and flavour
2- Spain has still to favours the piety social policies, which help to create golden eras
3- Its decadence / golden periods gets more crucial since they also affects their military outcomes.
4- It reflects Spain's literary output very well and encourage the players to prolongate the lenght of their golden eras rather than their number... say, mandate of heaven over reformation, not to mention that it makes Spain + Louvre / Hermitage a really poweful combo ;)

Inca
Special ability: Children of the sun - Natural wonders generates double amount of culture and happiness, gold tiles generate 2 culture, thus allowing the Inca empire to became a cultural powerhouse early on.
Unique unit: Quechua, replaces warrior. +1 aditional movement, +50% strenght if garrisoned inside a city or if located on a friendly road. Great unit for defending a large empire early on, and its strategic points afterwards.
Unique building - Terrace. Replaces granary. It makes mountain tiles to produce 3 food. Self explanatory.

Mongols
Special ability: Give them the German special ability and give the Germans something remotely historically accurate.
Unique unit: Keshik, replaces chariot archer. +25% strenght and bombardement against cities, can move after firing. Yep, if you plan to make an early game rush and forge a ginormous empire this is your unit.
Unique building: Gher, replaces stable. Mounted units starts with an additional promotion (extra movement). Synergy!

Portugal
UU - Nao, replaces caravel. +1 aditional vision, it requires Optics instead of astronomy, thus enabling the Portuguese to explore and stablish oversea colonies way earlier than other civs.
UB - Feitoria. Replaces harbour. Yes, I know, shamelesly stolen from Civ 4. However, the effect of this building here is that Overseas trade routes generates +2 production, thus making it essential for your civ to stablish colonies overseas rather than colonize your own landmass.
Special ability - Noble people of the sea (in reference to their athem's quote "nobre povo do mar"). Portuguese recieve a gold bonus for discovering natural wonders and ruins. Coastatal and sea adquisition tiles cost a 75% less, thus making the Portuguese a great civ for explorers and founders of remote maritime colonies

Netherlands
UU - East Indiaman. Replaces Caravel, it has a strenght of 12 instead of 10 and a bombardement of 10 instead of seven, thus allowing for a natural cycle of sea domination (Portuguese rules the sea first, then the Dutch, then the English).
UB - Grondzeiler. It replaces windmill. It can be built on any kind of city, not only on cities located on hills. Most emblematic building of Holland, me thinks.
Special ability - Hanseatic leage. Every city state that you have met and is not on war against you generates trade routes with your cities as if they were a part of your empire. Maritime city states generates one military (mercenary) unit if allied with you each 10 turns, each 25 if they are just friendly, thus showing the Dutch reliance of commercial aliances not only for a financial, but also from a militaristic point of view.

Byzantines
UU - Cataphract: Replaces knight, it has additional hitpoints (not sure of how many since we don't know about this parameter, but I think that it is a cool way to represent their heavy armour).
UB - Theodosian wall. Replaces wall. Your citiy defenses can fire twice a turn.
Special ability: The city of cities (in reference to the title that travellers and merchant gave to Constantinople): Your capital grows at double rate and has a +50% bonus at producing wonders. In addition to simulate the greatness of Byzantium and the dependence of the whole empire on that city, it also rewards the adoption of the tradition social policy branch

Malinese
UU - Farari ("Braves"). Elite calvary units, they were extensively trained nobles with free citizens under their command. Replaces knight, it adds a +10% strenght bonus to the infantry units that surrounds them that can add up until a cumulative of +30% bonus. In order to compensate a Farari overdose, they are slower to produce than regular knights, so they have to be employed wisely (do you concentrate them in order to create more poweful shock units or spread them so they cover a larger battlefront?).
UB - Mud Madrasha. Replaces university. Adds a +15% to the appeareance rate of great people
Special ability - Golden caravansarai. Every gold, silver, copper and salt resource tile generates an aditional gold and culture point for the city that works them. Not only reflects mali's great cultural output, but also translates very well the dependence of their empire upon these resources.

Coming next: Additions
 
Those are actually some pretty good idea for the Byzantines there - certainly have my approval
 
Spain
Unique Unit: Conquistador, replaces knight. Can be built without acess to horses and has an additional radious of vision, thus being an awesome expeditionary force.
Unique Unit: Tercio, replaces musketman. Inmune to city fire, halves damage from bombardement. Ideal for city sieges.
Special ability: Non plus ultra. Cities in the borders of your empire generates 75% less unhappiness. Useful for stablishing remote colonies and / or expanding your empire at the expense of others.

However, I have to admit that the Siglo de Oro special skill sounds awesomesauce in concept... but a little too vainilla (too much similar to the Persian's one) and perhaps too much overpowered. What about a little modification?

Siglo de Oro alternative version: Units gain a +25% combat bonus during golden ages, each 5 turns of golden age your civilization generates a great artist. That way:
1- You have a civ which relies heavily in golden eras without following the Persian model, adding variety and flavour
2- Spain has still to favours the piety social policies, which help to create golden eras
3- Its decadence / golden periods gets more crucial since they also affects their military outcomes.
4- It reflects Spain's literary output very well and encourage the players to prolongate the lenght of their golden eras rather than their number... say, mandate of heaven over reformation, not to mention that it makes Spain + Louvre / Hermitage a really poweful combo

I have to say I like what you've done here! I prefer Siglo de Oro as a special power and I think your idea for it is better than mine. Though I don't see a way to extend golden ages in the piety tree... do we know anything about the length of golden ages beyond the fact that Reformation grants you an instant 6-year golden age? I may feel the same way about your statistics for the unique units as well.

However don't you think a knight that does not require horses might be a little too powerful? maybe the conquistador should have some other ability? Maybe something like the ability to embark to an overseas transport before the technology that enables it globally does. Thus making it ideal for overseas expeditionary forces, and potentially able to conquer city states. Though the embarking ability wouldn't be useful on all maps.

Also, I got thinking with the Tercio... first of all it does not seem like Civ V represents different models and skins within a unit. And also Tercio is more a formation than a unit, so let's build on that perhaps. Say Tercio is a replacement for pikeman instead (and is just a normal pikeman for all intents and purposes), however if it has a musketman and longswordsman on its flanks, every unit in the formation receives bonuses. Say that a unit attacking a unit in a Tercio formation always counts as attacking the one they would have the least advantage against (problem is this means the musketman does not contribute directly) and that damage is shared on the whole formation. This might be overpowered and it leaves out the musketman, so an alternative would be just give some passive combat bonus to every unit in the formation (and perhaps still have them take damage as a whole).
A problem with this whole idea ofcourse is that it might be complicated and can be completely negated by chokepoints (and with 1UPT, that might happen more often than is enjoyable).

An alternative then is to leave out the Tercio, and perhaps give the Conquistador a combat bonus vs. City states (units, cities, etc, generally to encourage and enable Spain to do a lot of conquering in the late medieval and early renaissance eras), instead of the other proposed abilities, but still +1 sight. Then instead Spain can receive a UB (dunno... plaza de toros perhaps?) or a UU (guerillero? the guerilla war against Napoleon being seen as important part of Spanish history and miliary history in general. Or perhaps a Galleon as a naval UU, it would be slower but with more strength I think, and perhaps add some sort of economic bonus to simulate the Spanish treasure fleet). Even though the Tercio now is exluded it can still be said to be included indirectly in that Spain receives a 25 % combat bonus during golden ages thanks to Siglo de Oro, reflecting their military dominance (in large part because of the Tercio) during this era.

Netherlands
UU - East Indiaman. Replaces Caravel, it has a strenght of 12 instead of 10 and a bombardement of 10 instead of seven, thus allowing for a natural cycle of sea domination (Portuguese rules the sea first, then the Dutch, then the English).
UB - Grondzeiler. It replaces windmill. It can be built on any kind of city, not only on cities located on hills. Most emblematic building of Holland, me thinks.
Special ability - Hanseatic leage. Every city state that you have met and is not on war against you generates trade routes with your cities as if they were a part of your empire. Maritime city states generates one military (mercenary) unit if allied with you each 10 turns, each 25 if they are just friendly, thus showing the Dutch reliance of commercial aliances not only for a financial, but also from a militaristic point of view.

The effects of the special ability seem very good for the Dutch, but I must remind you that in no way were cities in the Netherlands at the center of the Hanseatic league, that honor rests with the German Hansa cities like Hamburg, Lübeck and so on.
 
Ikael, I like your ideas, but I wonder if some are overpowered. I also think it's weird that Mali has a UB really similar to Songhai's UB.

I'm wondering if there's need for a consolidation project for Caravel unique units (especially after I suggest one of my own :p ).

For starters, I don't think that the Nao can come before actual Caravels arrive (especially not in the classic age, which is where optics is). I also feel that, for the sake of consistency over realism, Firaxis would go with the name "Carrack" (Carrack and Nao are the same vessel, more or less. Carrack is the English name for it, which was based on the Spanish name), but that's not the point right now.

I'd suggest making it a faster Caravel (+3 movement is the only thing that could logically be fair to make it better than the English, but it's also quite absurd, since it would be the fastest unit in the game, not sure what to do there) and +1 sight.

To make up for leaving the Nao/Carrack with Caravels, I would suggest moving the East Indiaman back to the Frigate. Unfortunately, I'm at a loss with how to make it distinct from the Ship of the Line. Maybe a non-naval UU for one of them? Could the Dutch have an Arquebuser or something?

Randarkmaan, I like the idea of a guerillero for Spain (Rifleman replacement most likely with combat bonuses in territory or on certain terrains). It helps diversify them so all their units don't arrive at the same time.

Anyway, my next suggestion:

Spoiler Venice :

Venice

Leader: Doge Enrico Dandolo

Unique Unit: Galleass - replaces Caravel strength 10, bombard 10

Unique Building - Arsenal - replaces harbor, extra experience for naval units

Unique Ability - La Serenissima Repubblica - 25% increase in Great People Production
Subject to balancing of course. I'm cheating slightly with the effect by combining other Italian city-states into Venice (when I think Great People, I think Florence first, but Venice did contribute some important artists as well). I wanted to try and represent the social stability of Venetian society where there were clear differences in status and power between the poor and the rich without any apparent social conflict. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much nuance in public order, corruption, and happiness. This might be a good plan B and is something that isn't taken. I thought about making it just Great Artists to mirror China, but thought this is more consistent with the separation of generals from other great people


EDIT: About Spain from another thread:

But I want to know why everyone thinks Spain = Colonialism and ONLY Colonialism. Sure, that's about 1/3 of their history, but you know that another 1/3 of their history was based off fighting the Muslims in Spain? There's a reason Isabella's such a religious nut, you know!

He proposed the unique ability of "Reconquista", which I proposed a modified version. This leads to my suggestion for Spain that combines my thoughts above with my thoughts in the other thread:

Spoiler Spain :

Spain

Leader: Isabella

Unique Unit: Conquistador - replaces Lancer
I haven't thought of exact details. I'm thinking specific unit abilities over stats would be preferred, but can't think of anything right now. The Knight is overcrowded with units and the Conquistadors were in a sorta middle ground between Knights and Cavalry, so Lancer seems perfect (same time as Sipahi).

Unique Unit: Guerillero - replaces Rifleman: movement 2, strength 25. Combat bonus when inside own territory.
Represent their ability to fight Napoleon. Very similar to Minuteman, unfortunately

Unique Ability: Reconquista - 100% combat bonus against cities that were originally Spanish. Formerly Spanish cities do half as much damage when bombarding you.
I think this is quite a unique ability and would represent Spain's reconquest of the cities "taken" from them by the Muslims (which was as much a legal fiction as a reality, but still technical enough to count for Civ purposes). An alternative would be to have cities conquered by Spain to have no unrest time or have half the unhappiness generated. This might be better (although less cool) because it'll maintain Spain as an aggressive civ.


EDIT: I changed my Venice UA.
 
I`d like to see Jamaica in the game:

Leader: Bob Marley
Uniqe ability: Reggae music; everbody is happy all the time
Uniqe building: Rum destillery; produces Rum luxury resource
Uniqe Unit: Atomic Bong; target city becomes very happy, but production is eliminated
 
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