Hello there, this is my first post, though i often visited the site for updates, scenarios etc. I am not quite sure if i was supposed to post this here. If not just move it and/or direct me to the correct location please
I have posted this vision of my ideal civ game in the 2k games website forum and in other forums with very positive feedback. Most of you i expect not to bother to read through as it is quite long. If you are too bored just read the timeline text as it is meant to be a story at the same time rather than just facts or suggestions. I know it is too late for most of those features to be implemented in civ5, but i am just hoping that one day there will be such a game.
SUGGESTED FEATURES IN CATEGORIES
Resources
-Central managing of resources rather than per city. Then distributed as needed.
-Prospecting. Use gold or a unit to prospect tiles for minerals, fishing grounds and ideal crop planting. Prosepcting should become more advanced by techs obtained. You won't get the same results if you prospect a tile in 1000bc and in 2000ad
-Minerals are depletable. Upon prospecting there is a limited amount to be obtained from a resource in a tile. Say you prospect a hill in 500bc and find 1000 units of iron. That hill can only produce 1000 units of iron and then it is depleted. Unless time goes by, you prospect again and you find more iron on the tile.
-As tile improvements are upgradable you will get more of a resource on a tile per turn with improvements of a higher level. A level 1 mine may yield 2 units of the resource per turn, while a level 3 may yield 5.
-More types of resources (opals, hardwood, oilfish, bees (honey), olives, fruit, potato, hard stone, salt, millet, buckwheat, beans, tin, pigments, etc).
-Plantable or acquirable resources. Like in civ 4 if you play earth map in the Americas you never have horses. Would it be so difficult to actually breed horses there after acquiring some after contact with a civ that had access to horses??
-Many raw resources can be used by industries to produce more elaborate and effective goods. For example build a jewelry in a city and you'll be able to use gems or silver or gold to make jewelry which makes people happier and brings in more income in the international market (wax, jewels, candles, paper, lamp oil, glue, ink, artwork, jewelry, steel, bronze, etc.)
-Of course many resources lie in the sea. Fishing, oil, crab etc. Prospecting will be needed there as well
-More ocean based resources
-Ocean depth: Ocean has various depth levels (say 1-5). Each level has advantages and disadvantages. Level 1 depth can be landfilled and used as grassland. Levels 1+2 can be connected with a tunnel or bridge. Oil can be found if prospected in levels 3+4 as well as better fishing results. Levels 3-5 cannot be landfilled or connected with bridges or tunnels. Level 5 provides faster sea travel, bonuses for submarines and even better fishing results.
Goal: All this should make it more meaningful to acquire as many resources as possible as you get extra bonuses for acquiring more resources (depletable resources) and you won't be able to rely on a single source of oil to fuel your empire through eternity.
Production
-Central gathering of resources and not every city for itself. There are other ways to compensate for growth and production of cities
-Many types of resources that are piled up in meters. Forests produce wood, mines minerals-marble-stone, farms-food, luxuries-other resources. Hammers are obsolete. buildings need raw materials to be built and gold. Buildings (or corporations) may use raw materials to produce more elaborate commodities like in "colonization". To build the Pyramids for example you will need say 100 stone and 100 gold. A mountain with stone resource and a mine on it may produse say 5 stone per turn. Gold may come from gold mines and trade. That way the number of resources controlled have a significant role in the game. You can't run an empire with a single unlimited source of say oil. If more than one cities need the same resource for their production per turn, it is shaed ecqually unless set otherwise by an option.. If you have all the raw materials needed to buils a building or a unit, it will be built in a single turn.
-Cities can build multiple improvements/units per turn. It all depends on resource availability.
-Energy producing factories produce energy in say megawatts. depending on location and type some produce more and some less.
-upgradeable city improvements
City Growth
-No more city radius. All tiles within the cultural borders (in the beginning) and the de jure borders (later in the game) can be used regardless distance from a city. As if a civ in reality would not use fields to grow crops if they were to far from a city...
-No more growth through food storage. Growth of a city depends on various factors that form a growth meter. Factors: labor, health, attractivity etc
Labor: If a city can offer jobs to more people that currently reside there, that amount is added to the meter. Openning industries, marketplaces, supermarkets etc, create labor points. Accordingly, unemployment puts a negative value on the meter and causes people to leave. A city could be offering less jobs than needed to its population, yet continue to grow, cause growth is dependant on other factors too. Unemployment leads to unhappiness and crime though, which put negative effect to the growth meter. Losing a resource type could cause an industry or business to go unproductive amd its workers being fired. The shutting down of a business reduces labor factor.
Health: Buildings, access to resources and commodities, surrounding tiles all have positive or negative effect on the health meter and subsequently on the growth meter.
Attractivity: City size, wonders placed in the city, buildings, parks, public transport, labor culture all create positive or negative attractivity points and have an effect on the growth meter.
-The citizens that are featured in all civ versions and can be asigned to work tiles or function as specialists still exist, but they do not work tiles anymore, as there is no city radius. Instead they are used to work an industry. One citizen per industry. Example: a citizen is asigned to work in a weavery and produce clothes or in a forge to produce swords. Citizens (and subsequently city size index) number is dependant on actuall population (i.e. 10k pop= 1 citizen, 20k= 2 citizens, 40k = 3 citizens etc)
-No workers anymore: the construction of a tile improvement is asigned by clicking on a tile and chosing the option "build farm" or "build road" or "build mine" etc. Every tile improvement has a cost, say 10 gold and 10 stone for a road or 10 gold and 10 wood for a lumber hut. Time of construction depends on reserves of the needed resources. If all are forehanded, completion is instant. If not more turns may be needed.
City Improvements
-Upgradeable city improvements through a number of levels.
-Industries for all scientific eras. Weaveries use silk, wool or cotton to make cloths, forges use iron, bronze to make swords, shields etc. Processed goods can be sold at a higher price in the international market (upon demand) and can also be used to produce other stuff like more elaborate processed goods or military units. (through ammunition, swords, shields, steel, bombs etc.)
-You can only build as many industries as citizen number or forhanded resources allow. If your city has 10 citizens, you can build up to 10 industries. If city population then drops and you have less citizens, the already build become inactive. You can't build a jewelry if you have no access to gold, silver etc.
Tile Improvements
-Upgradeable tile improvements that offer a bigger per-turn yield, the higher the level (resources and appropriate tech needed to upgrade)
-Bridges and tunnels that connect landmasses (available only on water tiles of 1-2 level depth)
-Watchtowers
-Walls (like Hadrian's wall)
-Barb wire (for example to increase the chance of capturing a spy, attempting to sabotage a coal plant)
-Mine fields (both on water and land)
-Water mills, hydro plants, damms, solar panel complexes
-Energy producing plants (coal, nuclear) can be built as a city improvement aswell as a tile improvement
-Canals (Suez, Panama) or even smaller that connect rivers. Large canals bring in cash when other-civ ships pass through. (also see Map section)
-Navigable rivers (also Map section)
-As in RoM more types of roads (paths, roads, paved roads, highways). Accordingly more types of railways (steam, electric, magnetic...)
Money
-Energy trading. Energy is why most modern wars happen so it should be implememnted somehow. A raw idea: Each civ, depending on size, population, tech era, buildings etc has a value of energy amount needed per turn to run smoothly. Depending on the resources (oil, gas, coal etc) and buildings each civ has, it produces some amount of energy per turn. If the civ can't cover its needs for energy, some buildings may become inactive and people unhappy. The civ could of course trade for more resources, or could even close deals to directly buy energy from civs with surplus, via pipes (much like modern Russia).
-Deals to "rent" foreign tiles and take advantage of the resource on it for limited time depending on the deal (like in imperialsim).
-Deals to prospect on foreign tiles for buying or renting the tile.
-More corporations taking advantage of more types of resources performing more tasks. Corporations could take raw materials to create more complex ones and sell them. According to techs and era people may need more commodities, for more happiness or health.
-Selling and buying of weapons. Weapon industries are built as a city improvement and units produced can be sold to other civs. Of course both the industries and the weapons are very expensive.
-Tourism. Older buildings, like arenas, cathedrals, wonders etc bring in money. There should also be relics as a resource that allows an archaeological site improvement that yields a lot of money (like in RoM)
-Trade market. every civ puts their tradeable items on a global market page and all that are interested may place their bids. computer sets the price. Deals about energy resources may be set individually.
- Loans. Loan money to other civs with interest and the opposite. Very important!
-Overseas colonies have great maintenance cost and if not treated properly they may want to seek independence. Of course they can be left free as vassals. Colonies that are still under mother-country control after the discovery of a specific tech have no independence thought or higher maintenance any more: Example: French Cayenne, Gibraltar, Fawklands etc
- Bigger bonuses for naval blockades/City sieges.
-Introduction of slaves and rebellion from slaves and their units.
-International events such as the Olympic Games. Host city decided by Olympic Comitee team project and brings in a lot of money.
-Three-way (or more) deals for diplomacy or trade ( especially energy trading as described in the timeline).
Scientific Progress
-Technological advancement doesn't come from research/money, but from buildings and actions. Each building/unit/action bares values of various research path categories, like military, culture, economy etc (see timeline text). Each tech has values which when reached it becomes available. Military science i.e. would have 1000 military research points value and 500 culture. A barracks gives say 10 points, an archer 2 points, a temple gives 5 culture points, a war 50 etc. When the appropriate number is reached the tech becomes available ( very much like the Founding Fathers feature in Colonization). That could even lead to multiple technologies to become available at the same time. Afterall most of the technological advancement did not come from guys that were sponsored to sit in a lab/library and do research, but from experience through everyday needs.
- More technologies with passive bonuses. Ex. "Guerrilla Tactics" tech gives all melee units +10% forest strength.
Space
-Option for an expanded tech-tree into the future.
-Space colonization. Not necessarily through multiple earth-like planets, but maybe with a 2d space map acquired by say the Hubble world wonder (virtually just a picture with some planets on it and their attributes). You can then organize missions to the planets, prospect for natural resources and set up mining or real colonies (depending on planet type) all through a couple of screens. Not too much to handle i think. See also timeline text. Of course colonization of real eart-like planets would be great, but probably impossible.
Army/War/Battle
-Logistics and supply for armies. No more Chinese armies of horsemen invading Spain with armies that have travelled tens of thousands of miles through a time-span of centuries
-If a civ declares war on you and another civ lies between your borders, allowing troops of your enemy to march through their terain could or should cause war.
-Better battle. As described in the timeline text, it needs more strategy. On attack, armies should be taken into a battlefield screen and either have the battle play automaticaly or (battle) turn by turn, the two sides make their moves as in chess.
Borders
-Deals to buy or sell tiles (like us did with Alaska) or even cities (especially if potential buyer culture is strong in tile or city).
-Fixed borders after some point, tech or UN decision. Much like today where you barely have any border changes.
-de jure and de facto borders. De facto is cultural influence which also sets the borders in the beginning of the game. De jure are pre-war borders and later in the game the borders decided between nations or wider aliances
Religion
-I liked the feature of the Charlemagne scenario, where civs gain favor with the pope for spreading religion and building religious buildings. They may receive prizes, units or the religious leader may call for a big quest. I also liked the religious orders or medieval banks as corporations feature in another scenario that i can't remember, that allowed special units, buildings and features.
-Call for crusades
-RoM religious features
Diplomacy
-The ability to negotiate with multiple nations at the same time. For example representatives of America, England, France, Germany and, Russia having talks about ending a war, negotiating an alliance, trade embargo
-Unions of the type of the European Union or the NATO
-More options for the United Nations
-United Nations troops.
Map
-Round Earth through hexagonal tiles
-Allow tiles to be changed. We can bring water to a desert and turn it into farmland. We can drain a lake and fill it in. We can bring down mountains or plant a forrest. Terraforming
-Climate changes
-Canals: A city built on an isthmus can only be used as a canal after building the appropriate city improvement, available in the later stage of the game. Until then naval units have to exit the city to the tile they entered it. Also available to build 1-2 tile canals like the Suez or the Panama and charge ships a fee for going through. The canal of course can be built by another nation or corporation and keep control of it for the amount of turns agreed with the host nation, cashing in the profit.
-Navigable rivers and river canals: Rivers are navigable by special units that cannot enter ocean tiles. River canal field improvement like farms and mills. Tiles adjacent to rivers may host multiple improvements like farms, mills and a river canal that is only used to connect rivers for the river units with no other bonuses.
-Build improvements on the field: Damms on rivers, solar panels in the Sahara etc, aeolic parks. Within borders outside city radius, Corporations of foreign nations could also come into play for that
-SAM batteries available as terrain improvements. Also misile silos would be nice to keep your nukes well-stored (not in the middle of a city)
Various
-Way more quests. for bigger or for lesser rewards
-More technologies, especially for the Epic and Marathon speeds.
-More units in the modern era. More types of tanks, planes etc.
-Tanker unit?
-Many features from RFC like spawining of civs in the historical time, historical goals, special ability, world congresses etc. RoM also has a lot of interesting options in that field
-Waaaaaay Bigger maps. Even on huge earth maps one cannot build more than 10-15 cities in Europe in civ iv
-Immigration, both legal and illegal
-Projects like building a fast railway network, a damm, a bridge, a canal, space exploration, space colonization have very large costs. You should definitely not be able to colonize the whole universe, or undertake 100s of space missions in a short time.
-Naming landmarks. like rivers, mountains, seas, peninsulas etc. Gives a random map game a more personal touch (Very important!!)
I have posted this vision of my ideal civ game in the 2k games website forum and in other forums with very positive feedback. Most of you i expect not to bother to read through as it is quite long. If you are too bored just read the timeline text as it is meant to be a story at the same time rather than just facts or suggestions. I know it is too late for most of those features to be implemented in civ5, but i am just hoping that one day there will be such a game.
SUGGESTED FEATURES IN CATEGORIES
Resources
-Central managing of resources rather than per city. Then distributed as needed.
-Prospecting. Use gold or a unit to prospect tiles for minerals, fishing grounds and ideal crop planting. Prosepcting should become more advanced by techs obtained. You won't get the same results if you prospect a tile in 1000bc and in 2000ad
-Minerals are depletable. Upon prospecting there is a limited amount to be obtained from a resource in a tile. Say you prospect a hill in 500bc and find 1000 units of iron. That hill can only produce 1000 units of iron and then it is depleted. Unless time goes by, you prospect again and you find more iron on the tile.
-As tile improvements are upgradable you will get more of a resource on a tile per turn with improvements of a higher level. A level 1 mine may yield 2 units of the resource per turn, while a level 3 may yield 5.
-More types of resources (opals, hardwood, oilfish, bees (honey), olives, fruit, potato, hard stone, salt, millet, buckwheat, beans, tin, pigments, etc).
-Plantable or acquirable resources. Like in civ 4 if you play earth map in the Americas you never have horses. Would it be so difficult to actually breed horses there after acquiring some after contact with a civ that had access to horses??
-Many raw resources can be used by industries to produce more elaborate and effective goods. For example build a jewelry in a city and you'll be able to use gems or silver or gold to make jewelry which makes people happier and brings in more income in the international market (wax, jewels, candles, paper, lamp oil, glue, ink, artwork, jewelry, steel, bronze, etc.)
-Of course many resources lie in the sea. Fishing, oil, crab etc. Prospecting will be needed there as well
-More ocean based resources
-Ocean depth: Ocean has various depth levels (say 1-5). Each level has advantages and disadvantages. Level 1 depth can be landfilled and used as grassland. Levels 1+2 can be connected with a tunnel or bridge. Oil can be found if prospected in levels 3+4 as well as better fishing results. Levels 3-5 cannot be landfilled or connected with bridges or tunnels. Level 5 provides faster sea travel, bonuses for submarines and even better fishing results.
Goal: All this should make it more meaningful to acquire as many resources as possible as you get extra bonuses for acquiring more resources (depletable resources) and you won't be able to rely on a single source of oil to fuel your empire through eternity.
Production
-Central gathering of resources and not every city for itself. There are other ways to compensate for growth and production of cities
-Many types of resources that are piled up in meters. Forests produce wood, mines minerals-marble-stone, farms-food, luxuries-other resources. Hammers are obsolete. buildings need raw materials to be built and gold. Buildings (or corporations) may use raw materials to produce more elaborate commodities like in "colonization". To build the Pyramids for example you will need say 100 stone and 100 gold. A mountain with stone resource and a mine on it may produse say 5 stone per turn. Gold may come from gold mines and trade. That way the number of resources controlled have a significant role in the game. You can't run an empire with a single unlimited source of say oil. If more than one cities need the same resource for their production per turn, it is shaed ecqually unless set otherwise by an option.. If you have all the raw materials needed to buils a building or a unit, it will be built in a single turn.
-Cities can build multiple improvements/units per turn. It all depends on resource availability.
-Energy producing factories produce energy in say megawatts. depending on location and type some produce more and some less.
-upgradeable city improvements
City Growth
-No more city radius. All tiles within the cultural borders (in the beginning) and the de jure borders (later in the game) can be used regardless distance from a city. As if a civ in reality would not use fields to grow crops if they were to far from a city...
-No more growth through food storage. Growth of a city depends on various factors that form a growth meter. Factors: labor, health, attractivity etc
Labor: If a city can offer jobs to more people that currently reside there, that amount is added to the meter. Openning industries, marketplaces, supermarkets etc, create labor points. Accordingly, unemployment puts a negative value on the meter and causes people to leave. A city could be offering less jobs than needed to its population, yet continue to grow, cause growth is dependant on other factors too. Unemployment leads to unhappiness and crime though, which put negative effect to the growth meter. Losing a resource type could cause an industry or business to go unproductive amd its workers being fired. The shutting down of a business reduces labor factor.
Health: Buildings, access to resources and commodities, surrounding tiles all have positive or negative effect on the health meter and subsequently on the growth meter.
Attractivity: City size, wonders placed in the city, buildings, parks, public transport, labor culture all create positive or negative attractivity points and have an effect on the growth meter.
-The citizens that are featured in all civ versions and can be asigned to work tiles or function as specialists still exist, but they do not work tiles anymore, as there is no city radius. Instead they are used to work an industry. One citizen per industry. Example: a citizen is asigned to work in a weavery and produce clothes or in a forge to produce swords. Citizens (and subsequently city size index) number is dependant on actuall population (i.e. 10k pop= 1 citizen, 20k= 2 citizens, 40k = 3 citizens etc)
-No workers anymore: the construction of a tile improvement is asigned by clicking on a tile and chosing the option "build farm" or "build road" or "build mine" etc. Every tile improvement has a cost, say 10 gold and 10 stone for a road or 10 gold and 10 wood for a lumber hut. Time of construction depends on reserves of the needed resources. If all are forehanded, completion is instant. If not more turns may be needed.
City Improvements
-Upgradeable city improvements through a number of levels.
-Industries for all scientific eras. Weaveries use silk, wool or cotton to make cloths, forges use iron, bronze to make swords, shields etc. Processed goods can be sold at a higher price in the international market (upon demand) and can also be used to produce other stuff like more elaborate processed goods or military units. (through ammunition, swords, shields, steel, bombs etc.)
-You can only build as many industries as citizen number or forhanded resources allow. If your city has 10 citizens, you can build up to 10 industries. If city population then drops and you have less citizens, the already build become inactive. You can't build a jewelry if you have no access to gold, silver etc.
Tile Improvements
-Upgradeable tile improvements that offer a bigger per-turn yield, the higher the level (resources and appropriate tech needed to upgrade)
-Bridges and tunnels that connect landmasses (available only on water tiles of 1-2 level depth)
-Watchtowers
-Walls (like Hadrian's wall)
-Barb wire (for example to increase the chance of capturing a spy, attempting to sabotage a coal plant)
-Mine fields (both on water and land)
-Water mills, hydro plants, damms, solar panel complexes
-Energy producing plants (coal, nuclear) can be built as a city improvement aswell as a tile improvement
-Canals (Suez, Panama) or even smaller that connect rivers. Large canals bring in cash when other-civ ships pass through. (also see Map section)
-Navigable rivers (also Map section)
-As in RoM more types of roads (paths, roads, paved roads, highways). Accordingly more types of railways (steam, electric, magnetic...)
Money
-Energy trading. Energy is why most modern wars happen so it should be implememnted somehow. A raw idea: Each civ, depending on size, population, tech era, buildings etc has a value of energy amount needed per turn to run smoothly. Depending on the resources (oil, gas, coal etc) and buildings each civ has, it produces some amount of energy per turn. If the civ can't cover its needs for energy, some buildings may become inactive and people unhappy. The civ could of course trade for more resources, or could even close deals to directly buy energy from civs with surplus, via pipes (much like modern Russia).
-Deals to "rent" foreign tiles and take advantage of the resource on it for limited time depending on the deal (like in imperialsim).
-Deals to prospect on foreign tiles for buying or renting the tile.
-More corporations taking advantage of more types of resources performing more tasks. Corporations could take raw materials to create more complex ones and sell them. According to techs and era people may need more commodities, for more happiness or health.
-Selling and buying of weapons. Weapon industries are built as a city improvement and units produced can be sold to other civs. Of course both the industries and the weapons are very expensive.
-Tourism. Older buildings, like arenas, cathedrals, wonders etc bring in money. There should also be relics as a resource that allows an archaeological site improvement that yields a lot of money (like in RoM)
-Trade market. every civ puts their tradeable items on a global market page and all that are interested may place their bids. computer sets the price. Deals about energy resources may be set individually.
- Loans. Loan money to other civs with interest and the opposite. Very important!
-Overseas colonies have great maintenance cost and if not treated properly they may want to seek independence. Of course they can be left free as vassals. Colonies that are still under mother-country control after the discovery of a specific tech have no independence thought or higher maintenance any more: Example: French Cayenne, Gibraltar, Fawklands etc
- Bigger bonuses for naval blockades/City sieges.
-Introduction of slaves and rebellion from slaves and their units.
-International events such as the Olympic Games. Host city decided by Olympic Comitee team project and brings in a lot of money.
-Three-way (or more) deals for diplomacy or trade ( especially energy trading as described in the timeline).
Scientific Progress
-Technological advancement doesn't come from research/money, but from buildings and actions. Each building/unit/action bares values of various research path categories, like military, culture, economy etc (see timeline text). Each tech has values which when reached it becomes available. Military science i.e. would have 1000 military research points value and 500 culture. A barracks gives say 10 points, an archer 2 points, a temple gives 5 culture points, a war 50 etc. When the appropriate number is reached the tech becomes available ( very much like the Founding Fathers feature in Colonization). That could even lead to multiple technologies to become available at the same time. Afterall most of the technological advancement did not come from guys that were sponsored to sit in a lab/library and do research, but from experience through everyday needs.
- More technologies with passive bonuses. Ex. "Guerrilla Tactics" tech gives all melee units +10% forest strength.
Space
-Option for an expanded tech-tree into the future.
-Space colonization. Not necessarily through multiple earth-like planets, but maybe with a 2d space map acquired by say the Hubble world wonder (virtually just a picture with some planets on it and their attributes). You can then organize missions to the planets, prospect for natural resources and set up mining or real colonies (depending on planet type) all through a couple of screens. Not too much to handle i think. See also timeline text. Of course colonization of real eart-like planets would be great, but probably impossible.
Army/War/Battle
-Logistics and supply for armies. No more Chinese armies of horsemen invading Spain with armies that have travelled tens of thousands of miles through a time-span of centuries
-If a civ declares war on you and another civ lies between your borders, allowing troops of your enemy to march through their terain could or should cause war.
-Better battle. As described in the timeline text, it needs more strategy. On attack, armies should be taken into a battlefield screen and either have the battle play automaticaly or (battle) turn by turn, the two sides make their moves as in chess.
Borders
-Deals to buy or sell tiles (like us did with Alaska) or even cities (especially if potential buyer culture is strong in tile or city).
-Fixed borders after some point, tech or UN decision. Much like today where you barely have any border changes.
-de jure and de facto borders. De facto is cultural influence which also sets the borders in the beginning of the game. De jure are pre-war borders and later in the game the borders decided between nations or wider aliances
Religion
-I liked the feature of the Charlemagne scenario, where civs gain favor with the pope for spreading religion and building religious buildings. They may receive prizes, units or the religious leader may call for a big quest. I also liked the religious orders or medieval banks as corporations feature in another scenario that i can't remember, that allowed special units, buildings and features.
-Call for crusades
-RoM religious features
Diplomacy
-The ability to negotiate with multiple nations at the same time. For example representatives of America, England, France, Germany and, Russia having talks about ending a war, negotiating an alliance, trade embargo
-Unions of the type of the European Union or the NATO
-More options for the United Nations
-United Nations troops.
Map
-Round Earth through hexagonal tiles
-Allow tiles to be changed. We can bring water to a desert and turn it into farmland. We can drain a lake and fill it in. We can bring down mountains or plant a forrest. Terraforming
-Climate changes
-Canals: A city built on an isthmus can only be used as a canal after building the appropriate city improvement, available in the later stage of the game. Until then naval units have to exit the city to the tile they entered it. Also available to build 1-2 tile canals like the Suez or the Panama and charge ships a fee for going through. The canal of course can be built by another nation or corporation and keep control of it for the amount of turns agreed with the host nation, cashing in the profit.
-Navigable rivers and river canals: Rivers are navigable by special units that cannot enter ocean tiles. River canal field improvement like farms and mills. Tiles adjacent to rivers may host multiple improvements like farms, mills and a river canal that is only used to connect rivers for the river units with no other bonuses.
-Build improvements on the field: Damms on rivers, solar panels in the Sahara etc, aeolic parks. Within borders outside city radius, Corporations of foreign nations could also come into play for that
-SAM batteries available as terrain improvements. Also misile silos would be nice to keep your nukes well-stored (not in the middle of a city)
Various
-Way more quests. for bigger or for lesser rewards
-More technologies, especially for the Epic and Marathon speeds.
-More units in the modern era. More types of tanks, planes etc.
-Tanker unit?
-Many features from RFC like spawining of civs in the historical time, historical goals, special ability, world congresses etc. RoM also has a lot of interesting options in that field
-Waaaaaay Bigger maps. Even on huge earth maps one cannot build more than 10-15 cities in Europe in civ iv
-Immigration, both legal and illegal
-Projects like building a fast railway network, a damm, a bridge, a canal, space exploration, space colonization have very large costs. You should definitely not be able to colonize the whole universe, or undertake 100s of space missions in a short time.
-Naming landmarks. like rivers, mountains, seas, peninsulas etc. Gives a random map game a more personal touch (Very important!!)
