The Official Civ4 Ideas Thread

[Goober]

Ohh ... The possibilities ...

1) Better Graphics (I am thinking 3D where you are able to move all aroud, and check out a battle or something from all angles)
2) More realistic mountains - I don't like the way they just randomly jut out from the overly flat grassland, etc. They should be better incorporated into the overall landscape. ALso, grassland, etc shouldn't be so flat, it should be slightly curvy, more realistic
3) More Civ's (I'm not saying this just because I want Canada to be a civ, I think some important Civs have been overlooked, like some African nations, and South America, and Australia)
4) More UU's. There should be multiple uu's for every civ, to increase the amount of decisions that must be made when choosing the civ in the first place. The mainstream units shouldn't be decreased, however.
5) Random events. Little things that may be annoying, or a reward, such as landslides that take out part of the countryside, perhaps even a part of your nation rebelling, and seperating, creating their own civilization. Reward ideas may be you discover a hidden horde of treasure which give you a bunch of money, or your Scientists make an amazing discovery, which gives you bonus production, or something (A nasty one: epidemics. SARS maybe?)
6) More realism. Modern Armor fighting spearmen just is not realistic, or fair. Giving Moderm Armor a new ability, say having the ability to "run" over other, walking units maybe? New combat abilities may not be the key, I'm not quite sure on this one, I will have to ponder the Enigma.

7) Being able to be a citizen in one of your cities. This would be very neat, i think. It would add a whole other dimension to the game, and let you get a first hand perspective on how you are governing.
8) More "Conquests" definitely (They may re-name them, thus the quotation marks). In personal opinion, more war scenarios should be included, such as the War of 1812, WW1/2, the Russo-Japanese War(s), Persian Gulf war(s), etc.
9) BETTER MULTIPLAYER!!! The current multiplayer is not very good, it tends to stall a lot, and I find myself spending up to a minute waiting for friends. Also, the game runs much more poorly.

I do seriously think that 1) would greately improve gameplay, and make the game much, much more fun. Civilization has a lot of potential, I was Civ4 to be the best of the Lot.

 

[DrMadd]

Mr Cackle

I also believe it would be a good idea to differentiate between Constitutional and Absolute Monarchy. Have War weariness and pesky old Parliament ruining the King's unchecked mayhem, while lessening the corruption/capitol distance ratio like a republic.
I will be able to play Conquest this week, and I figure I'm either going to stick with Monarchy, my favorite, or Feudalism.

"The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other.- Walter Bagehot

The Duties of any ruler are to rule his people wisely, and wear upon his person the best traits his nation possesses and flaunt as few of their shortcomings as humanly possible. This is not within the abilities of a hireling.-Myse

 

[Quasar1011]

We can now queue city production. For Civ 4, I'd like to see a queue for worker actions. It would be great to tell my workers to clear pollution first, then go back to building railroads if there is no pollution, automatically.

 

[sela1s1son]

I'd like to see Combat Engineers. An upgrade of the worker. Probably better defense then attack.

Also, adding more African and North American civs... plus an Asian one or two, have even larger world maps to play on. Even if this sacrafices on graphics to be playable.

Bring back "Superhighways"

Add a new type of resource "Economic" which gives a slight boost to your nation for each one you have up to X. Sugar and Tobacco or great examples, especially in history.

Horse "breeding" - If a cid has been trading to get horses, they should after a while... or have a good chance of getting... a horse resource near a city or cities. That way they can simply "Import, Raise, and breed" horses.

 

[Cornflake]

Originally posted by Troy0628
Democracy (has not existed since ancient Greece)

What are you talking about? Democracy still exists.

 

[mitsho]

Its a question of definition. What is Democracy? But this is off topic. Pm him, he will wxplain you better than I can.

There is now a huge amount of ideas here. But I have the feeling, that many think too small-edged. Civ4 shouldn't be a expansion (upgrade for workers, etc... ). IT SHOULD BE A ENTIRE NWE GAME!

mfG mitsho

 

[charmcd]

"one other possible solution though could be to make railway stations with worker units like outposts and airfields and such (includes all cities as having railway stations"


That's a great idea. Keep the existing rail roads, but in order to take advantage, a unit must 'enter' the rail system at a city or a rail station. Therefore airports aren't faster, but they are more convenient (no railnetwork is required).

An alternative would be to create actual train units: transports limited to rails. They would enjoy the unlimited movement, however your units would be limited by how many trains you actually have.


I'd also like to see the return of the Civ2 spy. Sabotaging units, planting nukes... these underhanded tactics are sorely missed! In diplomacy you can accuse players of 'harbouring terrorists', perhaps another level of mutual protection pact would kick in ONLY from terrorist incidents.

I'd also like the ability to trade multiple resources. If I have 5 iron, why not sell 4 to someone who can then resell them to someone else?

 

[XoDuS]

Originally posted by saintly_saint
Change the russian leader, God I wanna smack her face,(don't you just hate that little smiling russian scum?)

I agree russia should have Lenin. But if it is having a fare amount of females/males then each civ should have an option female/male leaderhead

 

[mitsho]

Why only one leader? say about 3 to ech civ? (balancing females and males) ant for the AI there's a random. Perhaps make it therefore that each leader stands for some traits. Communistic Russia is different of caristic russia!

mfG mitsho

 

[cinattra]

What about a turn-base similar to Axis-Allies whereby you have to declare all your combat moves before any attacks are played out?

 

[Portuguese]

A thing of most importance:

Last units should have stats like 60/50/6 for Battleship or 80/50/3 for modern armour!

This would allow multiple UUs for any CIV and many more combos for new MOD units to be entered.
Besides, i would strenghen the Tank Vs the Spear, if correctly done.

This is a must!

 

[cinattra]

What about some form of tax avoidance and corresponding uphappiness when you raise taxes too high too long depending on your type of government?

What about some form of happiness when tax rates are low?

 

[NankingDan]

Some new terrain improvements:
1)Highway: Build in modern age to put +1 commerce on square. Same movement as roads. May want to build on squares where you can't get the shield bonus from railroads. Also, I think it would be cool to see the looping, intersecting concrete freeways surrounding your cities.
2)Bring back the farms from Civ2 or do something to alter the irrigation graphic in more modern times. I hate being in the modern age and having the irrigated squares looking like chicken-scratches
3)Possible terrace farming advance to bring irrigation to hills
4)How about little fences around cows and game, purely for looks?
5)Refrigeration, or some kind of improvement/advance in Industrial times that reflects the boom in food production technology
6)Bridges that can span 1 square of water. Big commerce bonus on bridged squares. Maybe bridges could collapse until the discovery of replaceable parts (or something)
7)Canals!

 

[DrMadd]

Democracy, as it existed in Ancient Greece, no longer exists. What we have now is no true democracy, but closer to the Republic. Every Democracy that has ever been died of self-inflicted wounds. Democracies in their pure form are too prone to acts of mass chaos, as a government where literally anyone can veto a law of have a hand therein, and this slows down the legal system in practice. No wonder the Romans took them over.

 

[charmcd]

I don't know if this has been addressed anywhere before... but if we use our imaginations a little, it's quite possible for a regiment of spearment to defeat a batallion of tanks (not LIKELY mind you...)

Certainly there are no modern units of spearmen, so it's hard to pull a genuine analogy, but think of modern wars where tanks were defeated by ambushs of local guerillas. Perhaps that's how a unit of spearmen could defeat a tank. A tank doesn't have to be destroyed, just disabled (jammed tracks, falling into a pit). If I was armed with a spear and figthing a tank, I know that I'd be more likely to use the spear to set traps than to try to pierce the armour!

Hell, Drs. Henry Jones Junior and Senior defeated a tank with a horse, a rock and a pen!

 

[sampedestal]

i would really, really, really like to see a wargame-esque battle thing. like, if your unit has three hp, u get three "divisions" to move around. or something like that. i'm really getting tired of losing to an enemy and not being able to tell why.

i'd like a better government system more similar to alpha centauri's.

here's an interesting idea: detachments. say u have a regular legionary and want need to hold the square ur on but also need to secure a mountain one square away. u divide the legionary and send part of it off. each detachment has 1+ hp and the legionary loses that much. so if u send a 1 hp detachment, the regular legion becomes a conscript.

and firepower from civ2 should return.

 

[Khan Quest]

Regrouping – Two wounded units of the same type (e.g., both Calvary) and any skill level could regroup to form a single, fully healed veteran unit. The regrouping counts as an attack. Both units must be on the same tile. The move for the new unit will be the worse of the two original units.
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Below are three more ideas that are related. Former paragraphs may refer to ideas in later paragraphs.

Multiple city improvements (CI) – Build a second or third Cathedral to placate more of the population!

Each subsequent CI would cost the same as the first and require upkeep cost as the first, but would only be half as effective as the previous, rounding down. For example, improvement X provides 4 culture and makes 2 citizens happy. A 2nd X would add 2 culture and 1 happy; A 3rd X, 1 culture, for a total of 7 culture and 3 happy. A 4th X could be built, but would provide no benefit.
--
Some CIs could optionally be built outside of the main city tile, and some would be required to.

If the city that built the CI is razed, the CI remains. If the CI is within the radii of two cities (of the same civ) upkeep and benefits could be transferred for 1/8 the cost of building the CI.

Upkeep could be abandoned. The CI would lose, say “10 shields” of its value for each turn abandoned. This could be repaired by workers (and tax money). The loss of shields would have diminished affect of the CI usefulness, being useless at 50% or less of its original cost. A CI obtained by a culture flip could be used by the capturing civ, if they have the tech level. They may elect to pay maintenance in either case or abandon it.

The CI could be pillaged for a number of shields at 10x the attack value of the pillager/bombarder.
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I suggested earlier adding commodities that could be traded to other civs. I’d like to expand on that a little more. First of all, the current trade between civs and the current trade generated by resources, luxuries and bonus items, and working the tile remain unchanged as this reflects trade within the civ.

The trade values of bonus item or commodity could be traded to other civs increasing trade between the civs. For example lets say a gold deposit generates 4 trade on a worked tile. Those four trade, whether that tile is worked by the host city or not, could also be traded with another civ that doesn’t have gold, increasing trade for both civs. These items could be retraded to other civs, if desired, through the middleman civ. This would also allow going around a trade embargo if one is in place.

I’d like to chime in on limiting RR range. The argument that it is reasonable for one troop to hop aboard a train to get to the other side of the continent in a year, is unreasonable. There’s more to it than that. It’s entire companies that have to moved including all their equipment and the logistics involved, including paperwork and authorizations. Unlimited movement could return with the discovery of highway systems.

I’d like to propose even more infrastructure development. Besides the addition to super highway lines connecting cities, how about aqueducts built on top of tiles, power lines and communication lines. As part of the build of an aqua duct, a city also get two free “pipes” that must be connected to a freshwater source such as a river or a lake. Aquifers could also appear with the discovery of construction or perhaps with a later tech discovery. Workers could build additional pipes, say to another city or a redundant path to hedge against pillaging. If a water source lays entirely within a foreign border it may be traded for.

A water source capacity would be limited. A one-tile lake could support a population of 30. Each river tile could support a population of five. Loss of water would mean a population decline.

Power and factories. Power plants (PP) could be built without factories for a moderate increase in production. A single PP would provide power to a local factory, the city and one other city. Cities could be connected by a power grid, built by workers. Two grid lines come with the price of a PP. Neighboring civs could be on the same power grid, with electricity as a commodity to be traded. A PP built inside the main city make one citizen unhappy. A factory and PP on the same tile is a little more efficient. The Hoover Dam Wonder would have to be modified.

A Hydro- plant must be built on a tile with a river, and cannot be built on the main city tile. The tile with the plant would flood, and would be considered a “lake” tile. The tile could contain road or R/R, with appropriate trade bonuses, and a food bonus for R/R. If pillaged or abandoned to the point of destruction, the down river tile will flood for 5 years (selling is OK).

Likewise Nuke plants must be built next to water tiles. Destruction means melt-down.

Communications (Telephony, Radio, TV, etc.) – Communication Electronics (CE) would be relatively cheap to build. CE would reduce corruption in democratic and republican govs, and reduce the chance of a city being bought by a spy. Cities could be connected as a worker action with communication lines. Trade for connected cities increases in proportion to both the number of cities connected and the percentage of the civ’s connected cities.

A later tech would allow Repeater Stations to built in coastal cities for trans-continental connectivity.

--

Pillagers would choose from a right-click activated pop-up menu to pillage, CI, Highway / R/R / road & improvement, grid lines or communication lines. The menu would allow selection of a preferred pillage sequence.

 

[Zaki]

First of all, I would like to say that I didn't read all of the previous posts. I was scared by its amount. Therefore, I apologize if somebody already posted something similar to my propositions.
Second of all, one could say that these ideas are more suitable for Civ 3.5 rather then for Civ 4. That might be truth, but I still like my ideas, so here they are:

1. I like that game feature who allow strategic resource to deplete. I think it's realistic, and to add to realism, I believe that each resource should have different amount on each location. As soon as you connect that resource by means of road or colony with some of your cities, its exploitations begins, and adds some amount of that resource per turn in some sort of resource pool. When you start to produce i.e. swordsmen, you start to spend resource from that pool. Once your resource pool is empty, you can't produce anything that requires that resource. When you buy some resource, needless to say, you buy exact amount of it and store it in the resource pool.

2. On the other hand, I dislike very much mines on grasslands or plains. So I think that it should be replaced with, say, villages. Maybe even with same characteristics (adds 1 shield and so on). Obviously, this needs more elaborations.

3. As for Civilization strengths, I am surprised that "Artistic" is not already included, and I propose it strongly. Of course, it would further include whole range of city improvements like theaters, operas, museums, galleries and so on. Maybe, somehow, Artistic Leaders could appear after some event.

4. Finally, I don't believe that assimilation is as mandatory as it is in Civ, no matter how some nation is small in population or insignificant in culture. It's more matter of their satisfaction with their position in new empire than matter of national consciousness. So I propose that Civ incorporate national uprisings as a form of civil disorder.

That's it for now. I hope that at least one, or part of one idea, will be as appealing to people in Firaxis as it was to me.

 

[cinattra]

How about some separation of governments and economic systems? Not sure how it would work, but I only know that it should since a communist government is not the same as crappy economic system anymore.

 

[cinattra]

Originally posted by Mad Danny


yes but the two points I'd make regarding the matter are:
1. on large continents it takes longer to transfer a unit between cities in an aircraft than by train - which just seems silly (unless it takes several months to load and unload aeroplanes and only a few minutes for trains)
2. it's bad enough waiting for AI to take their turns when you're in the last fifth of the game and you can see everything and everyone moves dozens of units per turn - and it can be rather irritating to see the AI whizzing it's units around the railroad trying to expend all it's movement points

one other possible solution though could be to make railway stations with worker units like outposts and airfields and such (includes all cities as having railway stations)- then units moving normally would only get the normal road bonus and units on a station or city square would have a 'railway' hotkey to pick a station to get transferred to - then travelling between cities works pretty much the same as airlifts and you need to set up temporary stations on some combat fronts. (like someone said maybe limit airlift distance by tech perhaps then limit railway travel similarly - going from steam to electric to maglev or something)

although granted this idea doesn't account for the shield production bonus of railroads so if anyone has ideas how to adapt it..

Totally agree, well maybe not totally, but pretty close to it anyways!

Also, airports should be able to fly out stuff according to the size of the city it is in, it shouldn't be limited to only one airlift per turn. If you know anything about airlift you know that the amount of stuff the airport can handle depends on the size of the airport.

Railroad bonus should only be used when using a railway i.e. operate railways just like airports are operated. Current railroads should turn into freeways with movement based on(which would be built like railroads are now) movement which could be twice the movement of roads.

Railroads now would only need to connect cities instead of covering every square.

Problem solved!