The Civ V wish-list!!!

[Rub'Rum]

1. An in-game option to delete saves

I can't believe some games can't get the simple save thing. This feature is so simple. Some games do ******ed things, like in The Witcher, everytime you press F5 for Quicksave, the game creates a new 20 megs savegame file. There is no "quicksave" slot, it just creates a new file. I had to go out of the game and delete hundreds of saves at the same time to clear up gigs of space. Please cater to the quicksave junkies, hehe.

3. Ability to play random games but have an AI excluded (such as, if you're sick of playing against Hatshepsut, you can make the game choose random civs but NOT Hatshepsut)

Yes, so simple and obvious. If I have to play a fifth game in a row with a conquest-thirsty Shaka, I'll cry.

7. Better graphics

NO! NOT BETTER GRAPHICS PLEASE! Better yet, transform the game into just squares and circles and bleeps. Come on, optimize the game, make it uber complicated bleeps and squares and triangles attacking circles!

9. More interactive barbarians (such as barbarians making their own 3-city nations and striking deals with other, real civs)

Wouldn't they just be like another civ then?

10. A more interactive United Nations
13. A better foreign advisor (maybe we could have a virtual room where all the leaders sit down in a table and actually move like they're real)

Haha, that would be awesome. See all the leaders sitting at a table at the UN or something. You could look around, like, propose something and look at each one's face to see how they're reacting. Yeah!

 

[DMOC]

I was hoping barbarians could do things like give away 5 axes in exchange for a worker, or something like that (idea needs work though).

 

[Onionsoilder]

Barbarians already can get workers...

 

[Naokaukodem]

Barbarians already can get workers...

But you can't trade units with them...

 

[Scilly_guy]

You can't trade units with ANYONE, you can only gift them.

 

[DMOC]

The idea needs work ...

 

[rysmiel]

Yes, human never cohabited with dinosaurs....

I do actually know this. I just think dinosaurs are Cool, and pretty much always mod the barbarian units in any game I play to be dinosaurs.

(If we got near-future techs, I would totally be arguing for cloning mammoths and dinosaurs.)

 

[Naokaukodem]

You can't trade units with ANYONE, you can only gift them.

I didn't say the contrary, my friend...

 

[Rub'Rum]

I do actually know this. I just think dinosaurs are Cool, and pretty much always mod the barbarian units in any game I play to be dinosaurs.

(If we got near-future techs, I would totally be arguing for cloning mammoths and dinosaurs.)

I want raptors and land sharks.

 

[Brighteye]

It's been a long time since I poked my head in here, but here's my wish-list for Civ 5:

Better AI
I don't like the AI getting bonuses to make it harder and I don't like having to work from being behind. I don't care for fancier graphics; I expect that they'll be necessary to make shallow people happy, but I would like to be able to turn them off, still have a functional game and have other improvements, such as to the AI, that make the game worth buying. When I have a lot of units, animations take time, and I get through turns very slowly. The programmers should bear that in mind.

I like the mix-and-match civics systems of CTP and CIV. Options like these make for fun games, and removing them for the government-type system of Civ2 would be sad. I'd like to see them expanded.
It's nice in a way to have science, culture and money separate, but I'd like it too if these were linked slightly, such that being scientifically advanced gave minimal culture points, and winning battles did too.
I would like to be able to claim territory without founding a city. Perhaps a direct conversion of money into culture points in a tile would be easiest; combined with a default fall of culture points in tiles this would require continuous upkeep, which seems about right. This way I could use culture more aggressively to define borders, take resources or block passage, which would make its role in the game much more interesting.

I like the promotion system: again, the choices make for fun games. I'd like to see attack and defence values, as well as health. I'd like promotions to affect all combat in a tile, so that guerillas can attack hills better as well as defend in them, for example.

I'd like to see less diplomatic penalties for wars, and more for what actually happens in the war. More fine distinctions in diplomacy in general would be nice, but in wars it's annoying to declare war in an ancient era and have it remembered forever even if it involved a little scrap, but have no difference between this and conquering half a civilization.

I want culture to be spread by trade especially, but also simply by there being trade connections (trade too small to count in game terms). If a city is razed there shouldn't be a power vacuum, but lots of minor allegiances to other civilizations that can easily be overcome by someone determined. On this note, this would need hard cultural boundaries, which define a nation's borders and can be closed, and cultural influence.

Obviously I would like it if micromanagement were not necessary, such as changing the science rate to be 0 and 100% rather than an intermediate value.

Most importantly of all, however, I would like the game to be based on a points system, rather than separate victories. In order to get a good score in the game one must ignore building a civilisation and just focus on the chosen victory condition. The game would be infinitely improved if demographics (which are already calculated, just for fun) were taken into account. If scores went into fine detail, such as accounting for newly conquered cities and not letting them detract from the demographics too much, and even scoring individual buildings, improvements within the cultural sphere of influence and so on, that would be perfect.

 

[DMOC]

Brighteye -- I agree with your idea about the scoring system. It only takes into account several factors, and not all of them are necessary to win the game. In more specific terms, it doesn't take 40 cities with 20 population each (which would lead to a high score) to win a game. Cultural victories especially suffer from the scoring system.

 

[Brighteye]

It would be particularly useful in preventing it being necessary to decide on a victory condition in the first few turns.
There should be some way to link religions (and culture) to military success or scientific success so that if you choose a random civ, or your chosen civ is good at one, you can try for a relevant victory of a different type.
Customisable religions, for example, would enable religious people to give their units religious promotions, or perhaps enable them to declare war and get a happiness bonus. Similarly, if there were options for your religion, you could make it focussed on trade, and increase your science output.
Culture could have a bigger effect of battles: fighting in heavy opposing cultures might give rise to partisans or give a battle penalty. If that doesn't work culture could just affect things at home like war weariness: if the civ is more cultured, and has traded with yours, then your citizens would be much more unhappy. If culture also came in different types then the unhappiness could be dependent on the similarity. At the moment this is more reflected by leader attitudes based on chosen civics.

I'd like happiness to play a bigger role. At the moment it's quite easy either to have happy citizens or not, but I think that a more gradual system would be appropriate, with city size affecting health much more, and happiness affecting production or commerce. If Civ returned to having everything made in fives or tens instead of ones, so that a basic grassland made ten food units, happiness could alter that slightly to four or six or even three.
Civics could alter how likely happiness is to affect your production. Things like fascism and communism would make happiness irrelevant, but the unhappiness penalties might build up so that it'll be very difficult to stop being fascist or communist.

 

[rysmiel]

I
Culture could have a bigger effect of battles: fighting in heavy opposing cultures might give rise to partisans or give a battle penalty.

I still think culture should have a chance of causing enemy units to defect, cumulatively growing every turn they are on your culture's ground by an amount depending on how much culture you have and how much their home civilisation has.

 

[rysmiel]

I like the mix-and-match civics systems of CTP and CIV. Options like these make for fun games, and removing them for the government-type system of Civ2 would be sad.

I still want fixed covernments back; just more of them, more differences between them, and easier ways to transition between them, depending. (Left-leaning democracy to right-leaning democracy; should be easy. Religious fundamentalism to Stalinism; should be hard.)

I would like to be able to claim territory without founding a city.

If it's not based on cities, it might as well not be Civ.

I like the promotion system: again, the choices make for fun games.

I find them irritating, they're part of what's wrong with the scale of Civ 4. A game supporting regularly having thousand-unit armies wouyld strike me as really not having room for complex untit promotions.

I'd like to see attack and defence values, as well as health.

I strongly agree here.

Obviously I would like it if micromanagement were not necessary, such as changing the science rate to be 0 and 100% rather than an intermediate value.

I absolutely disagree here. Micromanagement is most of the fun of the game.

Most importantly of all, however, I would like the game to be based on a points system, rather than separate victories. In order to get a good score in the game one must ignore building a civilisation and just focus on the chosen victory condition. The game would be infinitely improved if demographics (which are already calculated, just for fun) were taken into account. If scores went into fine detail, such as accounting for newly conquered cities and not letting them detract from the demographics too much, and even scoring individual buildings, improvements within the cultural sphere of influence and so on, that would be perfect.

This idea I am entirely in agreement with.

 

[Churchill's Hat]

I still think culture should have a chance of causing enemy units to defect, cumulatively growing every turn they are on your culture's ground by an amount depending on how much culture you have and how much their home civilisation has.

I don't think that culture should cause them to defect, but rather, perhaps lose unit strength or be more willing to surrender if they are being defeated in battle (and become enemy POWs) if taken into account along with the relative strength of the two civilizations in the area.

 

[DMOC]

In addition to my wish list on page 37 of this thread, I'd like to have an improvement for desert tiles. This improvement would undoubtly be unlocked during the modern era. I don't have any ideas for names but I think the certain improvement should be unlocked from a technology like Ecology. I would propose adding 2 and 2 to each desert tile. Of course, this may be adjusted.

 

[squid1111]

A specialized improvement for each tile: mines for hills, farms for grasslands, etc. that would give bonus bonuses on their preferred terrain.

 

[Rorybob]

A specialized improvement for each tile: mines for hills, farms for grasslands, etc. that would give bonus bonuses on their preferred terrain.

That already happens?

I want a scoring system that doesn't assume you're going to be a stone-age conqueror of the world.

 

[Skallagrimson]

I'll re-summarize my wish list items from months and months ago and I can't find the post, lol:

1) Civ borders negotiable in diplomacy screens. "This border stays here or we fight!" Once set by diplomacy, culture can no longer move a border (or "culture conquer" a city, which is just about the most ridiculous game mechanic EVER). Wars cancel previously fixed borders, and then culture takes over until the next peace treaty.

2) Make an option for real-time combat, a la Medieval Total War. Whatever units are in the "stack" deploy to a real-time battlefield, for the player to control directly in a live battle. Archers, pikemen, cavalry, all units are given orders where to go, whom to fight, etc., and tactics will be a greater determinant of who wins. Also when sacking a city, allow a real-time module when in single-player mode, to go on a bit of a rampage to vent off frustrations, etc. (and perhaps include an adult module for fully realistic ...pillaging!)

3) Add a richer backdrop of domestic politics. Opposing noblemen to watch our for; religious factions causing trouble; marriages to arrange between noble families to either strengthen allies or weaken opponents. This should run similarly to diplomacy, but on a domestic level. Overall success will have a modifier on base city happy caps, and so on.

4) Military logistics should be reworked: the PRODUCTION of a city should be building WEAPONS. The STAFFING of an army should be from the POPULATION. If a unit is disbanded the population returns to the pop of the nearest city, and the weapons may be sold for gold if not obsolete, or scrapped for raw materials (production hammers with a slight penalty) if obsolete. If simple weapons are assigned to simple population, you have a level zero unit (no XPs). If you want to train the unit (barracks or academies, etc.), there should be a TURN commitment to that training. Possibly 1 turn per XP, which can be accelerated with a Great Military Instructor. SUPPORT for a unit or a stack of units should consist of a food and gold commitment, whether the unit is in or outside of one's borders. When outside one's borders a unit should be considered "supported" (with a consistent defensible supply line running similarly to trade routes: connected by road to a friendly city without interruption by an enemy city or unit) or "unsupported" (supply lines are cut off). When supply lines are cut off, unit happy and healthy scores will begin to degrade, which will take a toll on their combat strength. When "support" is restored, the happy/healthy climb back up towards full strength.

5) There needs to be a means of transporting food within the empire. This can best be done by a special "food supply" specialist, which doesn't generate GP points or add beakers or gold or hammers, but rather, adds food scores to the pool of food available throughout the empire. In a food-poor city a player can then draw from the available food "specialist", either to work tiles or feed specialists there.

6) There should be more earth map options. Not simply "E18" as a scenario, but pre-create a number of earth scenarios showing the realistic outlay of which civilizations were on the earth map at different points in history, so that a player wanting to "role play" an actual leader from history, won't have to spend his first six months owning the game, embroiled in modding.

7) There should be a wider variety of resources. Tobacco, cocoa, citrus fruits, lead, date palms, chickens, yew trees (which should be required for longbows), all easily come to mind. Maps need to be more interesting than they currently are, and offer a greater resource-incentive for conquest or trade.

Those are the biggies, from what I see.

 

[Rorybob]

2) Make an option for real-time combat, a la Medieval Total War. Whatever units are in the "stack" deploy to a real-time battlefield, for the player to control directly in a live battle. Archers, pikemen, cavalry, all units are given orders where to go, whom to fight, etc., and tactics will be a greater determinant of who wins. Also when sacking a city, allow a real-time module when in single-player mode, to go on a bit of a rampage to vent off frustrations, etc. (and perhaps include an adult module for fully realistic ...pillaging!)

This could be a good one, but think of the immense task the developers have to do to put it in, and it would make combat much, much easier. (Combat would actually be winnable, then. )