The Civ V wish-list!!!

[JohannesH]

Balderstrom writes

Generally I try and keep my ideas within the spirit of CIV ...

I would like to increase complexity in CIV, but I agree with you that it sould be done in a way which increases also the thrill which has alway been in the game.



I would also contribute to Sangelis

4. Realistic Resources...

.

1. I would call the resources at the start of the game natural resources, which give much better crops (bread, gold hammer) than the planted ones. Natural resources cannot be destroyed, only for example plantations. Planted resources can be completely destroyed. In this way the best of the original idea of resources is kept and we also get a new possibility:

2. I would have special buildings for each resource.

Example: you have planted ten silk resources -> you can build ten buildings producing silk textiles in any ten of your cities. Loose a resource - loose a building.

But the usefulness of these buildings is related to their number in world - if there are 100 silk producers in the world, a new producing building would mean economic defeat (for all the producers, though).

Maybe even the Apostolic palace could play a role here.

3. I would also change factory in a similar way (see my previous post).

Now instead of only repeating myself I have worked on a new leader personality represented in my previous posts.

Great tradesman
+ the trade-like buildings above work better for you
+ main harbor +2 happines for the next turn instead of +1, for the incoming trade ships
+ trade navy works better for you (more gold)

And let us have creative fun in this thread (and the whole forum, of course) in a sister- and brotherhoodlike spirit. If I love an idea I promise to buy the creator a pullakahvit in Helsinki.

 

[JohannesH]

My motivation here was to make the sea more interesting. The really new idea is in 3.

Goods from overseas need a trade route and vessels carrying these goods. These new ship units would sail from port to port and could be captured. If a vessel with cargo is captured you will loose gold to the capturer. If the vessel gets to its goal port, you will get gold.

Portugal and Netherlands could have their special unit as these trade ships.

1. So an automated trade ship has a home port and a goal port defined, in different continents.
The goal port must have a harbour but may belong to any country (which allows its use).

You can invest gold on these ships, investments being in a range [min,max]. If the vessel gets to another continent, you will get for ex. 1.15 times your investment. If it is lost –you will loose your investment.

An incoming trade ship from another continent could also bring food to the harbor (this would simply mean city growth).

2. A new national wonder – main harbour has the effect that a vessel from another continent gives +1 happiness for the next turn. This is not cumulative.

3. Great explorers deserve to be great persons in CIV also. So I am suggesting this new category of great people from Dias to Nordenskiöld. These could be born in coastal cities proportionally to the number of trade ships (if you have 8 trade ships instead of 4 you double the probability for the gr. expl. to be born) and

as a super specialist give increased science and gold

have a special building in a coastal city, whose effect is better naval units (strength, movement)

special unit - a trade ship led by the great explorer (like the great generals leading land units) which brings extra science beakers (up to industrial era) + happiness when it comes to the main harbour (the special ship could be named by the great explorer). And it can be captured and probably found near the main harbor.



4. Another naval idea is Panama canal world wonder (in my prev post) which could be a rather visual wonder like the great wall

 

[WICKLC1]

All or most of a nation's units need to be unique.

Custom units. Sort of like the space ship in bts

Certain air units should be able to use nuclear weapons.

Instead of just having fighter/jet fighter, bomber/stealth bomber, and tank/modern tank, there should be a progression of units like B17,B29,B36,B47,B52,B1, and B2 for the bomber and something similar for other units.

Smarter AI

Unit/weapon sales

more options for vassal states

multiparty diplomacy. diplomacy usually is not just one on one.

More realistic combat. Certain units should have no effect on others, like infrantry vs. tank.

Enlarged nuclear arsenal. I want to have short range ballistic missiles, medium range, long range, intercontinental, air dropped nukes, and nuclear artillary(which did actually exist at one point)

ranged artillary.

 

[sangeli]

All or most of a nation's units need to be unique.

Custom units. Sort of like the space ship in bts

Certain air units should be able to use nuclear weapons.

Instead of just having fighter/jet fighter, bomber/stealth bomber, and tank/modern tank, there should be a progression of units like B17,B29,B36,B47,B52,B1, and B2 for the bomber and something similar for other units.

Smarter AI

Unit/weapon sales

more options for vassal states

multiparty diplomacy. diplomacy usually is not just one on one.

More realistic combat. Certain units should have no effect on others, like infrantry vs. tank.

Enlarged nuclear arsenal. I want to have short range ballistic missiles, medium range, long range, intercontinental, air dropped nukes, and nuclear artillary(which did actually exist at one point)

ranged artillary.

Civ 5 need to improve and the game interface (not sure if its the right word). I made a bunch of suggestions just in terms of game interface on the previous page. New Units don't matter because people will always be making new mods with new units.

The AI definitely needs to be smarter; I don't want the only way to challenge myself is to make it so I research much slower than everyone else.

Personally I find vassal states to be a meaningless concept, instead you should have direct control over your vassal's troops and cities, until they revolt.

Diplomacy should be more advanced and it should be able to include multiple parties. There definitely needs to be an option of making an alliance against other countries, and not just defensive pacts.

Unit and weapon sales would be good and they already havea system for it, the mercenaries. There needs to be some kind of cold war tech that allows NASA, ICBMs, and brings back the mercinary system.

I do agree that certain units shouldn't be able to hurt others, but I think you used a terrible example. Most people don't understand that one unit is not just 3 whatever, it is about the size of a division (maybe a little smaller). Anyway, an infantry division should be equipped with some sort of anti-tank guns like bazookas. The other problem with making infantry do nothing against a tank is when you are attacking a square with your infantry, and there is just one tank with .1 health. You wouldn't be able to win.

I have no idea why you are obsessed with tactical nukes, but whatever. There doesn't need to be three types of missles, a short range and an ICBM should do. Also, the best way to have nuclear bombs dropped from a plane is just to make a unit called a nuclear bomb, load it onto a bomber, and then there should be a bombing option called "nuke". Pretty simple.

 

[WICKLC1]

Sangeli:I have no idea why you are obsessed with tactical nukes, but whatever. There doesn't need to be three types of missles, a short range and an ICBM should do. Also, the best way to have nuclear bombs dropped from a plane is just to make a unit called a nuclear bomb, load it onto a bomber, and then there should be a bombing option called "nuke". Pretty simple.

Its kind of a hobby. Maybe I'll just make a mod for that.

 

[Shekwan]

Dudes come on do you really want to mak civ more complicated and less accessible to the average civver. Whilst your novel ideas may add complexity to the civ game does it really add the complexity that wes either wanted or needed?!

Also I'd like to note that history whores like myself always like more complexity, its not always the best way to add more entertainment to the game.

 

[WICKLC1]

Boringness, complexity, and unaccessibility are my ideas of fun. The people who like the simple things can buy civ revolution. I am a nerd!

 

[Scilly_guy]

Boringness, complexity, and unaccessibility are my ideas of fun. The people who like the simple things can buy civ revolution. I am a nerd!

Boringness, lack of complexity, and totally accessibility so that any moron can play it is my idea of fun, who needs a learning curve let alone a long one, it doesn't have to be steep.

Note I am not being at all sarcastic... wait... thats sarcasm about being sarcastic... thats just silly.

 

[caketastydelish]

Add Kazahkzstan as one of the civilizations. Be sure to include Borat as their leader.

 

[rysmiel]

All or most of a nation's units need to be unique.

Custom units. Sort of like the space ship in bts

No, no, and again no. No unique units. No custom units. A large range of normal units that everyone cam build. "Unique" os for strategies, not units.

Certain air units should be able to use nuclear weapons.

I'll go with that.

Instead of just having fighter/jet fighter, bomber/stealth bomber, and tank/modern tank, there should be a progression of units like B17,B29,B36,B47,B52,B1, and B2 for the bomber and something similar for other units.

That seems a bit much, though, I'm not really interested in half a dozen slightly different types of bomber when the extra variety could go on more units over a more interesting range.

More realistic combat. Certain units should have no effect on others, like infrantry vs. tank.

Every unit should have achance of winning against every other; a very small chance, but a chance.

Ranged artillery

Like in Civ 3 ?

 

[rysmiel]

Dudes come on do you really want to mak civ more complicated and less accessible to the average civver.

More complicated, yes. Less accessible; I don;t think the two go together, because I think
a) the average civver is smarter than that;
b) lots of the good ideas for extra complexity work as options you could switch on or not;
c) People who really want simple, shiny, quick, easy games are going to have the option of Civ Revolutions tailor-made for that preference. Civ 5 going that way would be a waste.

 

[WICKLC1]

Yeah, I think the average civ player is a little more intelligent than the average GTA player.

 

[WICKLC1]

Maybe the custom unit is a bad idea, but I still think that the units should be unique for all of the civilizations. It makes the game more interesting and realistic. There's no reason why two different countries would develop equipment that is exactly the same.

 

[rysmiel]

Maybe the custom unit is a bad idea, but I still think that the units should be unique for all of the civilizations. It makes the game more interesting and realistic. There's no reason why two different countries would develop equipment that is exactly the same.

No, there's not.

There are I think two different issues here.

One is whether civilisations should have units that are functionally different and unique, to which my preferred answer is "no". I would rather there were many more units that anyone could build, but that the sensible strategic approaches favoured several distinct combinations of units that worked well together in different contexts and from different sets of techs, so that the flavour of what your civilisation developed depended on your strategic choices rather than who you happened to be. It seems completely unreasonable to me that it should not be possible to learn how to build any specific unit, either by knowledge exchange (ie, trading techs) with your allies, or by conquering your enemies and acquiring some of their knowledge. (Or by the Great Library or equivalent.) That gives significantly more flexibility to the game.

The second question is whether different Civ's units should look different, and I am again inclined to say "no", provided you can tell them apart in the first place. Every penny spent on developing graphics is a penny not spent on developing gameplay; so far as I am concerned it can look like Civ 1 for DOS and I'll be happy so long as it plays well, and if it does not play well I don't care how pretty it is.

Strategic flexibility plus time spent on better things than making it shiny are a big win over realism in this particular context, IMO. Realism should never take priority over gameplay.

 

[Balderstrom]

There aren't enough stats to differentiate units for every CIV - the game would have to focus much more on combat - beyond just fixing its problems. Which would definitely not be CIV.
Varietas Delectat - which includes Ethnic Artstyles and Cultural Diversity do a pretty decent job of giving various CIVs a unique feel/look. If that was expanded upon by CIV devs it would be pretty cool, especially since those mods tend to almost exclusively focus on the ancient/medieval ages - which are somewhat easier to make noticeable differences.

 

[Balderstrom]

There is going to be an Art Team Rysmiel. Giving them something to do like cultural diversity would likely result in some pretty cool work. Not like the Art Team will be writing AI or churning out game mechanics.
And not like Firaxis will fire the art team just cuz the art work is mostly done - they'll need those guys for other games/expansions/etc.

Most ppl generally agree CIV looks pretty damn good now, they don't need to throw out what they have and start over. They should build upon what they have. Which will give a good chunk of time for the team to work on differentiating the civs visually.

 

[WICKLC1]

I think having more unique units would make it more interesting to play with different civilizations. Now in civ 4 it is pretty much the same no matter what country you play as. Unique units would give people more of a reason to try new civilizations.

 

[Balderstrom]

I think having more unique units would make it more interesting to play with different civilizations. Now in civ 4 it is pretty much the same no matter what country you play as. Unique units would give people more of a reason to try new civilizations.

Hardly. Leaders play a key role. Almost all, possibly all (I haven't check compared) the leaders have unique combinations of traits. Combined with the UU && UB makes each civ a decidedly different experience.

Doing what you suggest would not only be a nightmare to balance, it wouldn't add that much to begin with. As I already stated, if they were to differentiate units for each CIV the game would have to become a decidely focused war game with minutae of details for unit stats, ala WarCraft or an RPG.

 

[WICKLC1]

I think that unique units would blend perfectly with the game. And it would not just be a war game; You don't have to declare war.

For example whenever you build a modern armour as USA, you build an M1 Abrams which has unique capabilities, but is not necesarily better than what the other civs would build; Just like the single UU, but all of the units would be unique.

 

[rysmiel]

There aren't enough stats to differentiate units for every CIV - the game would have to focus much more on combat - beyond just fixing its problems. Which would definitely not be CIV.

Part of this could be fixed by attack and defense strength independently varying, as in all versions of Civ before Civ 4, combined with firepower and hitpoints varying as in Civ 2; tested mechanics that work, and that can very independently to some extent. Part could also be fixed by increasing the base values exponentially through time - warrior has attack 1, legion has attack 4, WWII tank has attack 64, present day modern armour has attack 256, so there's more room for variation, and incidentally, a very very small, but non-zero chance of a spearman killing a tank, which is my preferred behaviour for that situation.

Part also could be fixed by being intelligent about resource dependences, as some of the larger Civ 3 mods do. Suppose, for example, you have a line of two or three WWII main battle tank equivalents, which require, say, iron, coal and rubber to build. Suppose you then have another line of less powerful attack units - armoured cars, say - needing only two resources, and less powerful again but still useful units that only need one. If you have all three, you can build any or all of the above; so getting maximum military flex ties back into better expansion or diplomacy.