The Civ V wish-list!!!

[Phatkarp]

Actual real-time terrain combat MTW style would bring a much greater amount of real tactical skill into the game, reducing the emphasis on brute force that we have right now.

I agree with the problem you identify, but not the solution. A fundamental shortcoming of every civ is the reliance on brute force over tactical/strategic finesse. But a real time battle engine has its own problems - in particular, it makes the game more about those battles and less about the grand strategy of the main map screen. And the time it takes to run those battles . . . egads! The best combination of strategic/tactical as far as balancing the big map and little map was Master of Magic. I could maybe sign off on something limited like that.

But I would rather see a system that myself and others have proposed in the thread, namely a supply-chain system and bonuses for flank/rear attacks, bonuses for having your flank/rear supported, etc. In other words, bonuses dependent on the positioning of your units, not just on terrain and promotions. I think such a system would add a lot of depth to the game.

 

[Skallagrimson]

Time arguments start to lose some meaning when we have players putting 20+ hours into a Marathon game. Plus there could always be an "auto-resolve" option for stacks, as there is in MTW for when you don't want to micromanage a battle (and you believe you brought enough brute force to auto-win).

I agree with supply-chain systems and the need to support armies rather than view them as wandering islands of self-sufficiency as in Civ4. Flank attacks start to get into the tactical MM where it's more appropriate to represent it real-time on a real battlefield.

 

[Brighteye]

I agree that food needs to play a more important role, and to be able to be traded within and without the empire.
I suspect that the idea at the moment is that units consume so much less food than population that they are, in effect, self-sufficient, and that supplying them comes from the support cost. I'm happy with this.
I do agree that supply could be traced, and breaking supply lines would then be a bad thing, but this is a problem of the whole city-based system. In a real war I'm not in enemy territory until I take a city; territory I conquer becomes mine as the front moves. In populated areas (towns, villages, or maybe just any improved tile) there might be partisans later in the game, or if the enemy were under certain civics that engendered civilian interest in grand affairs, and perhaps there would need to be a mechanic to 'put down' resistance in a tile to make it one's own.
But since cities inevitably have culture borders it seems silly that I could, under your proposed system, surround a city and yet still have it cut off my supplies.
This whole area is a problem of Civ's simplification of things into city units. It doesn't make sense that I have to capture a city before I can use a road going right by it either, but that's the way things are.

A quicker solution would be if supply mostly ignored culture and relied on units; perhaps a rare use for the otherwise poor idea (in Civ) of ZOC. If the enemy could get units to break the supply lines from my cities then my units would suffer. This would automatically be related to culture because a civ has much greater mobility within its cultural borders than its enemy.

I like promotions, but I agree that instead of having them rely solely on combat experience, often from centuries ago, it would be better as a question of time. Thus a unit could get promotions from either combat or training, and then that regiment/division would have a reputation for such a skill, and would incorporate it into new training for recruits. In this way one could explain troops maintaining promotions over time.
It would also very nicely give rise to decorative units sitting in capitals that actually are quite good. Instead of keeping some idiot longbowman with city 1, he'd sit there and not do anything, and end up being city 3, combat 3 or something similar. That relates much more to the way things have worked, where Royal Guards or similar were taken from the best troops, even if they just sat around at home all day.

 

[Phatkarp]

I

This whole area is a problem of Civ's simplification of things into city units. It doesn't make sense that I have to capture a city before I can use a road going right by it either, but that's the way things are.

A quicker solution would be if supply mostly ignored culture and relied on units; perhaps a rare use for the otherwise poor idea (in Civ) of ZOC. If the enemy could get units to break the supply lines from my cities then my units would suffer. This would automatically be related to culture because a civ has much greater mobility within its cultural borders than its enemy.

I think that's a great idea.

 

[rysmiel]

It's winnable right now, but not anywhere near as much on a skill basis as it is in MTW. Actual real-time terrain combat MTW style would bring a much greater amount of real tactical skill into the game, reducing the emphasis on brute force that we have right now.

You presume that a tactical game would be more fun.

I don;t play Civ to win by unit tactics, and I'd rather it did not go that way. I play it to win by grand strategy and logistics. Some of which is brute force and some of which is force concentration. There are many more good tactical games out there than good logistical/strategy games.

 

[rysmiel]

Time arguments start to lose some meaning when we have players putting 20+ hours into a Marathon game.

That's still about a tenth the length of game I'd like the game engine to actually support, fwiw. Which is one reason why I play Civ 3 much more than Civ 4; I think it supports really large empires much better.

 

[Skallagrimson]

I suspect that the idea at the moment is that units consume so much less food than population that they are, in effect, self-sufficient, and that supplying them comes from the support cost. I'm happy with this.

I can live with the food cost being represented by gold support, I suppose. Doesn't mean I like it, lol.

I do agree that supply could be traced, and breaking supply lines would then be a bad thing, but this is a problem of the whole city-based system. In a real war I'm not in enemy territory until I take a city; territory I conquer becomes mine as the front moves. In populated areas (towns, villages, or maybe just any improved tile) there might be partisans later in the game, or if the enemy were under certain civics that engendered civilian interest in grand affairs, and perhaps there would need to be a mechanic to 'put down' resistance in a tile to make it one's own.

I think borders/fronts should move with units, as you say, for the purposes of determining supply lines and road movement, and then allow enemy units to "cut off" supply lines and road movement by penetrating into that territory (thinking in terms of Battle of the Bulge here). Perhaps each unit should have a 1 tile "border claim" such that if a line is contiguous, you can move a front with them, or if it's not contiguous, you risk them getting caught behind enemy lines. In a sense this would replace culture-based borders with military unit-based borders, which I think is more realistic.

Culture still has its place, but primarily in synergy effects like research, city happiness, population loyalty, etc. Not borders.

But since cities inevitably have culture borders it seems silly that I could, under your proposed system, surround a city and yet still have it cut off my supplies.

If borders were determined by unit presence, a city's borders would exist as a function of the unit occupying it. And perhaps the border "pop" could come as a result of how long a unit has fortified there.

Then the calculation of who has cut off whose supply lines, is determined by whose units are where. If you surround a city with units and their front is contiguous with the larger scale front, obviously it's the city which is cut off and the units besieged will begin to degrade in health and happiness. If your encirclement of a city is incomplete and the AI out-encircles you, the obverse should take effect, your units are now cut off. No supply costs since supplies can't GET to the units, but inexorably the units begin to degrade in combat strength as they lose health and happiness.

A quicker solution would be if supply mostly ignored culture and relied on units; perhaps a rare use for the otherwise poor idea (in Civ) of ZOC. If the enemy could get units to break the supply lines from my cities then my units would suffer. This would automatically be related to culture because a civ has much greater mobility within its cultural borders than its enemy.

It would be simpler to let the ZOC determine borders, and charge a mobility penalty for units that are cut off.

I think it's absolutely stupid that the presence of a cathedral in some city throws glue into the treads of your tanks such that they can't use a freakin' road. But if those tanks are cut off they'd move slower simply to conserve fuel and try to avoid ambushes, etc.

It would also very nicely give rise to decorative units sitting in capitals that actually are quite good. Instead of keeping some idiot longbowman with city 1, he'd sit there and not do anything, and end up being city 3, combat 3 or something similar. That relates much more to the way things have worked, where Royal Guards or similar were taken from the best troops, even if they just sat around at home all day.

Back in the day Royal Guards NEEDED to be the best troops, because kings and queens didn't want to be the next Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. That's another gap in Civ, is the ability of angry citizens to rise up and form, shall we say, "barbarian" units which, if they're sufficiently enraged, would put some of your back cities severely at risk unless you take countermeasures.

Although I do like the idea of archaic decorative units as a matter of tradition. Maybe as a special unit upgrade which not only changes the appearance but adds to the culture of the city where they're stationed.

 

[Skallagrimson]

You presume that a tactical game would be more fun.

I do!

I don;t play Civ to win by unit tactics, and I'd rather it did not go that way. I play it to win by grand strategy and logistics. Some of which is brute force and some of which is force concentration. There are many more good tactical games out there than good logistical/strategy games.

Let's face it, Civ warfare is 99% brute force. You throw enough cavs into the mix, it doesn't matter where they move when. That may be "fun" to you, but I don't find it appealing.

 

[gingermick]

Guys Iam not good with this quoting system, so if the wrong quotes are atributted Iam sorry, but Iam trying to get a point across, not be a cut and paste expert.

Culture still has its place, but primarily in synergy effects like research, city happiness, population loyalty, etc. Not borders.


If borders were determined by unit presence, a city's borders would exist as a function of the unit occupying it. And perhaps the border "pop" could come as a result of how long a unit has fortified there.


It would be simpler to let the ZOC determine borders, and charge a mobility penalty for units that are cut off.

I think here that borders during peace time need to be determined by something like culture, which I think is good part of the game, but during war, boreders are determined by Military presence, mainly to determine if they are in supply or out of supply. Also the ZOC should be brought back in. If you advance into enemy territory, their ability to move around your forces should be restricted aswell, not be able to shoot all over the place.

Its also strange that in Civ, even in the latter stages of technology/history/timeline/The GAME there is still the concept of taking Cities by force. During the Cold War, the acepted Soviet tactic would have been to avoid cities and flow, quickly around them, securing the borders of Europe (the coastlines) as quick as possible. After you have all the ground around a city, the city will eventually fall. This is an extension of Blitzkrieg, something that doesn't work in Civ, its all taking towns/cities, very medieval.

 

[TopDog]

it's also more realistic. I hate being able to cross a continent with a single scout before discovering the wheel.
More tiles means more transportation improvements, no more magic railroads, and perhaps a highway or autobahn improvement?

Agreed. Units, including ships, should have a certain range, and this can be 'refilled' at freindly cities.

Also, ginger makes an excellent point about only taking cities.

 

[Brighteye]

The whole game is city-based. We can't change that. We could have a system whereby there's another function to do in tiles, which is 'occupy' them. It could be similar to pillaging, only it's a cultural effect. It would reduce enemy culture in the tile and claim it as yours while the unit is in it, or cause unhappiness in nearby enemy cities, and maybe unhappiness in yours once you've emancipated your population.
That way you can devote your units to conquering land and surround heavily fortified enemy cities with your own borders so that they starve and riot into submission.

The ability to claim land with units would not work against cultural expansion of nations with whom you're at peace, but would with wilderness. To have a supply line you'd need it to be traceable within the line of sight of units or within your cultural/military borders and not broken by enemy units.
This would also solve my gripe of having to found a city to claim a resource. You could send a unit and fortify units along the supply line, or you could found a city. An enemy city would always take precedence over your precarious line of units, so it wouldn't distort gameplay too much.

 

[Phatkarp]

Tile ownership can be determined by culture spread initially. Ownership of an owned tile can be claimed by another faction that is at war with the owner if the tile is occupied by an enemy unit or is in the ZoC of that unit and not in the ZoC of a friendly unit.

For supply purposes just link the supply back to a friendly city. This link can go through unfriendly culture tile that you are at war with, but cannot go through neutral countries that have closed their borders. The link can be interdicted by enemy units.

It may be interesting to experiment with a game mechanic that maximizes the length of the supply line, too. Roads would allow the line to be longer, but so would technologies. The line might also be shorter for larger armies, and longer for smaller exploring contingents.

I think Skallagrimson has the right idea about this system, though I still disagree with putting in a tactical battle system.

 

[ichbinsehselber]

Most important:
1.) Build upon one of the existing CIV versions and do not rewrite everything from scratch! Each CIV version so far improved some things and was worse in others. The projects get ambitious and does not get finished. Which CIV version to build upon really does not matter much. Each CIV version is great as it is. Still they all have their weaknesses which can be enhanced!
2.) Do not try to enhance graphics even more by implementing more details, rather enhance the game logic and AI
3.) Get back to ATTACK / DEFENSE strength system (like CIV1,2 and 3 all have) instead of having just one strength value per unit in CIV4, where a different attack and defense value is the exception
4.) Nice to have even more key combat values (e.g. Hitpoints like in CIV3).
5.) Allow the interested user to understand the calculations
6.) Allow modding

 

[exhile]

Most important:

3.) Get back to ATTACK / DEFENSE strength system (like CIV1,2 and 3 all have) instead of having just one strength value per unit in CIV4, where a different attack and defense value is the exception

As long as combat promotions are not affected, I'm up for the return of the ATTACK/DEFENSE strength system.

 

[Tholish]

The attack defense system can be replicated by the promotion system. Its like special and general relativity. You can do more with it. Buildings can be modded to give promotions, and units can have them free. That's all you need. But really, its not the attack defense system, its the attack-defense-hitpoints system. All three in one. Elegant as snot grease.

Civ is often played tactically as it is, except the big strategy screen is being made to serve double as the tactical screen. I think this is bad elegance, and there should be a tactical screen for resolving battles between adjacent stacks. It could be combat pretty much like regular--turn based, same basic units and mechanics and such--but the game creates a battlefield for it to play out on, something separate from the big strategic screen and not using its many years long turns. That wouldn't alter the wholenature of the game too much but rather would enhance and highlight what is already there.

Each unit breaks down into three or four, no stacking, the board is about 8 by 8 and randomly generated based on the terrain of the defender's square (affected by adjacent ones), the rest of the game waits until the battle is resolved. Maybe trigger battles like this only when both sides have stacks of two or more units. Some ranged stuff could actually be ranged in this context maybe, stuff like that.

 

[Khadras]

I wish Civ5 to be a more complex then Civ4. For civ4 i use mods. I search for mods that has the most civs, the most units, the most game concepts (like RoM2.5 or WoC1.2), the most buildings, the most features, the most terrains, the most bonus and improvements, the most events then ever and a very long and complex techtree. I want the game to be realistic and long time playable. If it is complex, realistic and divers then it will be more strategy in the game and i will not be bored when i played the game for a long time.

The nuke system must be changed. The nuke must be more important, more divers, and hard to be built. Must have more resource to build nuclear weapons (like heavy water, plutonium). Plutonium results from procesing uranium and so on.

Resources must be cantitative. Resource must be store into cities, and when i conquer a city i take resources store in them. The gold must be in the same way.

I want that Civ5 to has an external map editor and a mod creator to help people makes mods.

Combat system must be more realistic and little predictible. It must has more variables.

I like ammunition. I want a amunition factory to build amunition. Amunition must be divers, bombs, bullets, missile, rockets, energy core (for energy weapons for future eras), each of them to be built on different building and store in amunition depots in cities.

I want a realistic biological warfare. I want to be in Civ5 visuses and bacterias, produces in special laboratories buildings, and vaccines to counter them, builts in special buildings. The viruses must be cantitative and calitative.

For bombs and rockets, i want to be able to set in the game before build the amound of cargo to be carried. For example: Power of Nukes depends of amound of plutonium inside them, power BioMissile depends of amound and type of viruses that contains.

 

[gingermick]

Iam afraid I disagree with this:

I like ammunition. I want a amunition factory to build amunition. Amunition must be divers, bombs, bullets, missile, rockets, energy core (for energy weapons for future eras), each of them to be built on different building and store in amunition depots in cities.

Although the theory and gameplay is understandable, this would rarely work in the more modern areas. Rarely twars are conducted against a nation that is equipped along the same standardisation lines as yourself. take the Sov/US influenced (and possible WWIII scenario) none of the opposing sides combparible ammunition could be used by either side. Artillery: 122mm vs 125mm etc, and this was nearly across the board, so it would all be useless. (not even train gauges were the same from Moscow to London!)

But this throws up the old question here of realism, do you want to be able to build "Tank unit" or "T-72/BTR-70 mix unit or Challenger/M113 mix unit".

And, I think it gets down to do you want ba sweeping strategic game, or a down and dirty tactical within strategy game? I personally would like to see both, with the level of "depth" as userdefinable. There are enouhg software engines out there that can be bolted on/mutated for this to work.

But I think ythat if you want a tactical system, you do need to be able to diversify units. In Civ4, a bomber is a bomber, wether this turn it bombs an oil rig, next turn a city and next turn a unit in a stack battle. Thats some flexible bomber!

 

[Skallagrimson]

I think here that borders during peace time need to be determined by something like culture,

So if Vancouver puts a new opera house in, and the Seahawks move to Portland, should Canada be able to swallow Seattle?

Its also strange that in Civ, even in the latter stages of technology/history/timeline/The GAME there is still the concept of taking Cities by force.

Have you, like, not watched the news at all for the past 10 years?

During the Cold War, the acepted Soviet tactic would have been to avoid cities and flow, quickly around them, securing the borders of Europe (the coastlines) as quick as possible. After you have all the ground around a city, the city will eventually fall. This is an extension of Blitzkrieg, something that doesn't work in Civ, its all taking towns/cities, very medieval.

Yes, that should be an alternative tactic, and would only work IF borders were determined by units. The effect of the Soviet strategy would be that all of the cities in their new conquered zone would be "under siege".

 

[Ulyaoth]

*haven't read thread*

Almost every idea I thought of for Civ 4 was put in(more improvements, different leaders, etc) haven't played much of it though to think of anything else to put in other than to do what is done already better, meaning bigger maps, better ai, etc.

 

[gingermick]

So if Vancouver puts a new opera house in, and the Seahawks move to Portland, should Canada be able to swallow Seattle?

I never said i totally agree with cultural subsumation, Iam saying there needs to be "control" of an area during peace time, and culture is quite a good way of determining that. I see it as representing to where the locals within that square look to for leadership/guidance/command/standard of living/language etc

Perhaps the concept should be limited to a set of eras, and perhaps whe n in the Industrial era, borders become fixed. But i see it that cultural power would then attract population away from lower culture to higher culture. representing the migration of populations wanting a better life.

Have you, like, not watched the news at all for the past 10 years?

Please dont patronise me, I was in the British Army for 22yrs, I have been part of the "news"..." for the past 10yrs".

And I can tell you, NO sane military commander would try a assault cities without destroying the oppositions Army in the field. Destroy the Army in the field and surround the city, and it will fall, eventually. And because of this defending Armies defend the ground around cities to prevent the attackers controlling this area.

Yes, that should be an alternative tactic, and would only work IF borders were determined by units. The effect of the Soviet strategy would be that all of the cities in their new conquered zone would be "under siege".

and yes as I said, during war, control of an area should be ZOC determined. And yes, they would be under siege, thats what happens in war! But sieges can be allieviated, Re- the Berlin Air lift, essentially under siege, becasue, the "enemy" controlled the surrounding area.