The Official Civ4 Ideas Thread

[treadwin]

I haven't seen one of these for a while !
Anyway please be gentle.


Civilization 4 Features

Tribes
There are no distinct tribes
The people and architecture adopt the look of their initial climate and their advances
Names are based on an initial language selection
Head of state represented on map until republic/democracy, consequences for death
More optional advances
Barbarians are one city tribes which may turn into players if left alone (nomads?)
Tribe type bonus when a number of optional bonuses of that type are researched

Example
Tribe becomes agricultural when 3? optional agricultural advances are researched. Advances must be researched, not traded.

Resources
Many more strategic resources tied to troop types and city improvements
Special square resources require optional advances, cow requires husbandry etc.
Build bonus for a city, for a particular construction, if the resource is in the city radius
Many more resources, but limits on how many cities may build using a resource
Resources available, for a price, by sending “trader” to enemy city, only war can stop it

Cities
All the population of the city have a role (they are all specialists)
Certain buildings permit the appointment of specialists
Cities can/must build multiple things at once by assigning workers
Only so many builders can work on a project at the same time
The buildings themselves don’t give a bonus, the specialists do
Military units use population points
Buildings must be placed on a city grid, cost/space dependant on terrain type
(3x3? 4x4? squares within main squares permit this)
Housing must be built for population increase, or an immigrant is created
Unhappiness may also create migrants, who may leave the city
migrants have a mind of their own
migrants may join an enemy city, found a new city, or revolt as a militia troop type

Military
Combat still on main window
Units built into armies of multiple figures.
(3x3? 4x4? squares within main squares permit this)
Military units must be under the control of a leader/general
The better the leader/general and military research, the further away they can be 0-3?
Better generals may therefore outflank weaker generals
Unit may be forced to retreat by combat results
If a unit is forced out of the control of a general it flees back to its home city
Cities may defended by militia/conscripts (citizens)
Weapons and tactics are researched, not troop types
Missile troops provide fire support but have weak melee
Tactics research allows formation control, mixed type units
Troop facing matters. Flank and rear attacks are more effective
Scouts, Raiders and Militia type troops do not need generals, but cannot capture cities
Non-Army Raiders may only be set to harass based from a target square not roam freely
Scouts, Raiders and Militia may be attached to armies/generals
Militia may operate only within a short distance of cities, or castles/fortresses
Regular troop types only allowed in clear terrain, hill, or on a road square
Special troop types are available based on availability of resources and research

Example
Celtic Warrior requires : Dye (Woad) and iron resources; two handed fighting and sword advances, temple and barracks in city, and 1 population point and northern start.

Other
More landmarks
Places of natural beauty generating tourism in later ages, if they are not mined etc.
Battlefields marked with memorials
Great wonders visible on main map
Hills may be forested, jungle, tundra, or desert as well as being hills.
Generally speaking, there will be fewer cities requiring more management.
Rivers and bridges more significant for combat and borders.
More small wonders based on resource combinations.
Great wonders benefits cannot be pre-determined.

Example
You build a “Great Temple” and get a partially random, temple type, great wonder from that age, that is affected by tribe type bonus (if any), location and resources, and that has not already been built. Same for Monuments and Exploration wonders. Later ages introduce Industrial, Social and Educational great wonders.

 

[Hellfire]

A new idea I came up with for automating of workers.

We seem to come up with all these different commands for automating workers. Instead of using commands, we should have a dialog for customizing the automation and allow us to control certain levels.

First, we select automate from a menu or something when a worker is selected. Then a dialog pops up and asks what we automate. For example, only build roads, don't change existing improvements, clean pollution, etc. These would be checkboxes. We could also have drop downs that determine certain types of priority when one thing needs to be done before another. Also, we could have drop down menus for types of improvement working. For example, we could have "build roads" but we could also have "Priority to build roads connecting cities" and "build roads to existing improvements. We could create a method by which we automate the workers so that the higher level players don't have to manual work as many workers any more.

To enhance it further, we could have defaults like city governor defaults so that you can simply automate a worker without having to go through the dialog unless you want to. And finally, options to set all workers to the default settings or to stop all automation on all workers in order to reset those orders.

As a side note about governors, city governors need to know when the player wants scientists, entertainers, or tax collectors as specialists rather than picking them at random for each city. It would also be nice if the computer could somehow calculate when a WLTK day triggered by entertainers and would produce more commerce/food/shields than without and help you trigger such days.

 

[LeroyJr]

I would like to see more animated battle scenes. Like the one guy was saying where you could choose to watch 3D or not. Maybe where you could command your forces as part of the attacking unit. Obviously this would add a whole new element to the game where you can take command of the attack or seige of a city personally. Aim and fire with your tank/whatever in a 3D scene.

Would certainly add to the flight options if you could take the controls of your bomber and fly over the city and let your bombs go over what you want to destroy. Getting shot down certainly would be interesting.

On another note the ability to create propoganda needs the Tech of television added. You can create propoganda via Radio, television, newspapers, pamplets and the Internet when the techs are available. You should have the option of spreading propoganda to each one of the civs including your own. You choose how much money you want to spend and on which medium. On your own civ war weariness will go down, on another it will go up. Spend a lot or a little your choice depending on your finances. Spend enough and the city will flip to you.

How about instead of a mass flip to you of a town they instituted immigration. If the citizens of one civilization are very unhappy they can ask to immigrate to your civilization. And vice/versa. A strong culture and economy would result in immigration from other civs. "A group of oppressed people from Boston would like to immigrate to Marsailles" You then have a choice of taking them or turning them away. If you take them Boston would drop a point in population and Marsailles would gain a point in population. Have a bad civ and watch your people leave for better ones. Have a good one and watch the people flock to you. Perhaps you could limit it to bordering countries. Refuges from your neighbors at war would flood you as war weariness and oppression set in. How about the immigrants carry their traits into your civilization. If you get immigrants from an agricultural society and put them to work on a dessert square you get the same advantage that an agricultural society would get. Have your Viking immigrants build your boats in your coastal city and gain the Seafaring trait for that unit. Build a worker unit with your American immigrants and get an industrious worker and so on. Work your propoganda into scientific civs and watch your science move up as you turn them into scientists.

Would take a lot of work but would certainly add an element to the culture flip idea.

 

[DarwinMayflower]

I'd like to see some complexity added to the most destructive aspect of the game, nuclear weapons. Instead of instantly advancing from non-nuclear to tactical nukes with immense destrcutive power, a nation would pass through several stages of nuclear potency.

The nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles would be built as separate units. One or more nuclear weapons would then be "loaded" onto a delivery vehicle for use. After the Manhattan Project, nations would only have the ability to build simple fission weapons. These would only attack the square which they were dropped into and would have less destructive effects than the nukes in Civ III. Further progress would come as a nation made its way up the tech tree, either by adding abilities to the current tech tree or adding a whole new branch to the modern era tree which can only be accessed after the Manhattan Project. Advancing further along the tech path would give a nation access to more powerful fission weaponry and eventually fission-fusion weaponry which has the destructive power of the nukes in Civ III. Nations could also pursue technologies to build dirty bombs, spreading super-pollution, or neutron bombs which would destroy population but not improvements.

Delivery vehicles for these weapons would come via the current tech tree. Initially, the nukes could only be loaded onto bombers, with their limited range and potential to be intercepted. Rocketry, space flight, and satellites would allow longer range missiles up to the unlimited range ICBM. The smart weapons tech might allow for multiple re-entry vehicles, allowing multiple small yield strikes over a range of squares from one missile.

Warheads as seperate units would allow for more diplomatic options. Many people have asked for the option to trade units. Diplomacy would also allow a nation to destroy its own nuclear warhead units in exchange for cash, techs, or the other nation destroying its warheads. Nuclear blackmail! Nations would also be able to offer "monitoring" where other nations would know the number and location of all its nuclear weapons for a number of turns.

A nation could choose to keep its nuclear capabilities a secret, or it could announce its level of sophistication with a test-blast where a warhead is detonated inside its own territory. This would worsen the attitude of other nations, but raise the estimation of their military strength.

Finally, a nation with nuclear capabilities could employ the "Dr. Strangelove" option. If a city is about to fall, a warhead in that city would be detonated destroying improvements and creating pollution based on the size of the nuke.

 

[LordFrostbite]

as a continuation on religious/cultral great leaders how about this:

What kind of Cultral/religious leader is either based on

1) Government (will explain later)

or

2) Tech Tree/religion (will explain later as well)
---------

For the government...Say you have a monarcy. Monarcys often made religious crusades based on whatever religion the king/queen was. Such as Richard the Lionheart being a deep catholic made crusades against the arabs. Queen Isabella of the spainards made crusades against the moors (african isloms) and wanted to explor new land (thus granting marco polo the resources to explore trade routes to asia, even if he found central america) beacuse she was deeply catholic and thought it was gods will for her to spread the catholic religion. Similarily, Anarchic governments will produce revolutionists while dictorial governments (this includes communism and fuedlism but not fascism or monarcs beacuse the upper powers are usually loved) However if a dictatore spawns a revolutionist, the revoltionist makes people happy but tries to thrown down the government and change it. If anarcy spawns it then the revolutionist tries to change it. For governments where the rulers are loved or voted in...revolustionsts also come to mind. They could want to stop tyranny in other countrys like hitler wanted to do to russia and how america wants to stop the iraq communism. Revolutionists should beable to make armys but should also do somthing with gurellias...prehaps having a whole new line of guerllia units beacuse thats usually how rebels fight...with guerrila tactics.

2) You gain religious leaders based on the religion you chose. The religions will be like governments and will come at differant times. Such as paganism (or whatever its called) comming in the first age but having conthalasism (or other christian relgions) come during the second age. You can also have more then one religion and gain the benefits of those religions BUT you have to take another tech called "religious freedome" which will only be offered to certin, non-dictoral, non-monarch governments. Religious freedome makes religious leaders even harder to obtain and allows you to have only one type of religious leader per religion.

Now catholic relgions will have crusaders. These crusaders will have the ablity to summon crusader knights (depending on the order such as templar, hospitlar ect) from EVERY catholic city. This means that some units stationed in a city join these crusader-leader and some are made out of the population. However these knights can only be used to take out non-catholic citys.

I cant really think of more religions but...Hindu, Buddah and those other asian religions (dont comment on if I spelled wrong or made bad reference, I am almost sure I did) will spawn more diplomatic people. I cant think of anything at the momment but feel free to add on to this!

Also see my thread about this.

 

[Kyborgi]

Tactical Combat

Absolutely. The chance of weaker unit winning a more powerful unit shouldn't be just random but to be affected by the players tactical skills. Think about MOO2. (haven't played MOO3 so I don't know if this applies to it too)

"Science stealing" (after combat)

After your inferior riflemen have won a combat against enemy infantry as your troops armed with those inferior garands find those superior StG44s. You shoud gain some science points towards the tech that allows those superior weapons.

Population as armies

This is a bit complicated but I try to explain the best way I can. First of all the city polulation should be measured in thousands or millions instead of "citizens" I mean that every citizen should have its tiny effect on the city production. Then when you "build" an unit the population should decrease according to the "strenght" of the unit, in other words according to the manpower of the unit.

Conscription

Related to the previous idea the conscription should be a number of men in each city (the percentage is set as "draft rate") trained as soldiers. The recruits could be armed cheaper because you had to build only the weapons. Also the coscripts would be cheaper to upkeep than the regular army men.

Upgrading

The previous ideas stated that each unit was a goup of men and that the wapons would be kind of separate unit. This would allow more flexible upgrading system and stealing enemy weaponry to upgrade your owm units would be possible. Also stocking weapons would be possible. The cities would have separate production points: for the improvements and for the weapons. The soldiers would come from the concription.

Buying and designing units

MOO2 again. Wouldn't it be nice to design your own army to fit in your personal tactical combat style? And you could also buy some neat designs from some companies (like U.S.A.F. from Boeing, Grumman and Mc Donnel Douglas) Oh, and you could also buy the weapons from some manufacturers to get your own production lines to produce something else instead.

Communism?

The civ economy is a bit weird because the government controls every factory and crop. Sounds a bit like communism? The people (or the corporations) should be able to decide what to build for themselfs and the state could buy the stuff it needs from them. Of course this would be different in some governments like despotism and communism.

 

[IglooDame]

Relatively minor adjustments, but here goes:

- all sub detection at a one-square distance would be automatic only when the sub uses more than half it's movement allowance in the preceding turn.
- all sub detection at two-square distance would be automatic only when the sub uses it's entire movement allowance the preceding turn.
- all sub detection not covered by the above is at 20% chance for each of your subs/destroyers within detection range during the turn.
- if an enemy sub is fortified for the entire preceding turn the 20% detection chance lowers to 5%.

Of course, the fact that the AI can "see" all subs would nullify this, so perhaps a rule that the AI cannot attack a sub without first having legimately detected it would help balance it out.

Also, Great Naval Leaders - produced the same way as GMLs, when an elite naval unit has a victory out of x chances, the naval unit has a GNL "flag". It then ups the attack and defense ratings for all naval units within two squares of it. If disbanded, it produces quadruple the number of shields that would normally result from disbanding that type of unit toward whatever the city (coastal of course) happens to be building except for GWs.

 

[Sparrow3]

Quote by IglooDude
- all sub detection at a one-square distance would be automatic only when the sub uses more than half it's movement allowance in the preceding turn.
- all sub detection at two-square distance would be automatic only when the sub uses it's entire movement allowance the preceding turn.
- all sub detection not covered by the above is at 20% chance for each of your subs/destroyers within detection range during the turn.
- if an enemy sub is fortified for the entire preceding turn the 20% detection chance lowers to 5%.
____________________________
-If an enemy sub is fortified for the entire preceding turn, your ships can pass right over the square it occupies and detection chance remains 5%.

 

[ybbor]

how about eachciv gets a specific wonder, like the americans could have the statue of liberty, increasing the likihood of immigrants bieng assimilated, and the British could have big ben ummmmm, producing a lot of culture, and the french could have the eiffle tower, giving the benifits of the clossus.... and so on

 

[holygrud]

Some ideas from me and probably a lot of "hear, hear" in support of ideas from others I've already seen in this thread:

Naming terrain features

I'd love to name mountain ranges, rivers, deserts, seas, lakes. One way this could work is the first Civ to see the new land feature (probably by means of a scout) should get to name it. It can then only be renamed if a differemt Civ's border engulfs it.

"Get offa ma land!"

I tend to decide from an early stage how much land I want before ending my 3000-or-so year war with every other nearby Civ. The land is usually a continent, after which I'm content I've established a large enough land mass to fund a decent military machine. However the AI has no respect for my domination of a continent and will sneak settlers into the smallest gaps between my recently conquered cities. I would like the option of hailing the galley or settler and saying "Ahem, the mighty army of moi is in the process of taking this land mass, please do not establish a city here unless you are ready to be annihilated by my hordes." It would also be cool to be able to say to neutral or friendly Civs that crossing a certain mountain range, river, geographical feature would be considered entry into our "land" whether our cultural border reaches that far or not. In a sense a diplomatic warning to avoid future conflict. Cautious AI Civs will then retreat until their attitude changes.

Future technology

Speaks for itself. Futuristic techs and units. How about long range biological warfare? Such as an area toxin that destroys wildlife and plants so cattle resources for example are destroyed and grassland turns into plains, or makes the land produce less food for several years/turns.

Terrorism / Guerillas

They're everywhere these days but so hard to deal with. Maybe if you take a city breakaway factions (partisans?) will run to the hills and be a long term menace making raids and taking out specific targets in your cities in revenge. Look at Israel / Palestine or former USSR countries. It's nothing like Civ 2 where you could take a city and kill all the partisans straight afterwards. Terrorists, or resisting oppressed minority groups could hassle you for decades, having stealth abilities. If you make incomplete counter-attacks or public attacks when your city has not assimilated the other culture then more people would take the place of their dead brethren. The solutions could be some sort of counter intelligence tech, use of spy units in the hills and cities, anti-terrorist improvements (like New Scotland Yard or America's new Homeland Security initiative).

Advisors and Wonders

Bring back the movie advisors from Civ2. Long live the king! They rocked. Likewise the wonder movies, they made it all so worthwhile with some poignant music and a great piece of footage. Now I get a crappy picture after all that hard work.

Diplomacy

I'm sure others have been more specific but I'd like simple options such as:
(when threatened and scared) "We would be happy to give you a gift but we're really poor, please come back in 20 turns and we'll try to make it up to you."
(when threatened and not scared) "You have got to be joking, leave now before I whoop your ass."
(when you're playing the Vikings or a suitably Conan-esque race and you threaten another Civ) "Give me gold or I will crush you, see you driven before me, and hear the lamentation of your women!"
(when you're playing the Vikings or a suitably Conan-esque race and have taken heavy losses) "I'll be back"

Protectorates, provinces, dominions

I don't understand exactly what these are but the British Empire had a lot of them. How about something whereby when you conquer a city that's really far from your capital you have the option to make it a protectorate giving the people more freedom and more of their own culture with fewer of your own units needed to keep order. This lowers corruption, raises happiness despite the distance from the capital as you have a consul in situ. The drawback is that over a long period of time the city is more and more likely to revert to its original culture.

Refugees

As others have mentioned. People fleeing war or strife/starvation arrive in your city placing a short term financial and food burden on your economy before being assimilated.

Culture by stealth

You can't take their cities by force, and they're too far away for your borders to influence them to culture-flip. What do you do? Send them McDonalds, Disney, Coke, episodes of Friends and a barrage of $100m Hollywood action movies. Watch the government of that Civ struggle to maintain the original cultural values, ban their populace from speaking an American hybrid of their own language, and insist people don't drink in the street and watch porn. While the city remains under their control you gain a small amount of revenue from all the merchandise you flog them.

That's my lot. I hope I haven't offended anyone. Not intended.

 

[Balastulin]

New worker action:

build Golf Course. Every bloody country in the world is going it so why can't we:

Food: +0
Shields: +0
Commerce: +6

Available with new technology, 'Globalisation' - offshoot from internet.

 

[CaptainCivFreak]

The player can tell the game where they want their settlers to settle (like the production line...) and they would in the order you specify as the settlers are built. Once a settler was headed for a location, there would be (like in Age of Empires & Age of Mythology, etc) be a little marker saying that someone is going to settle there. The AI cannot send a settler within a five square radius of the spot, or a ship with a settler on it. They cannot blockade it or 'steal' it with a noncombat unit. They have to send a warrior or something to destroy it. But, the settler has to either be able to get there in five turns, OR the square must be less than six squares from your nearest border.

Something else, the you cannot build cities if they will immediately border on another player's border and the if it won't have a full nine squares (this doesn't matter if the squares it's missing are in your territory, ex. a city is already using them.

Another way to make that fair without doing the above is to double corruption if the city is directly bordering another civ.

Those would be a good solution because I too hate it when the AI comes right up next to me and builds a city either on a spot I want to build, or extremely close to my border. The worst thing about it is that there's NOTHING you can do about it short of declaring war...

 

[Grazzit]

I would like:

1. The races to have more unique units

2. Have the diffrent race types have a discount on small and great wonders that are atributed to their type.

3. Have the races have Diffrent tech trees, or some unique techs.

4. Have races that are better in early years then some that are beeter in later years.

5. Multiplayer to be faster.

6. Have better unit control. But that has been mentioned.

7. AUTO RECON

8. Emergency message for hostle units entering culture borders

9. a usuable airforce.

10. Carriers able to hold more units.

11. Helicopters able to go farther. 15 squares at least.

12. Ability to load c5 aircraft with paratoopers and drop them anywhere on the map.

 

[CaptainCivFreak]

I'd have to agree... we need much better control over the air units... I'd like to see like what we had in Civ 2 by means of control. I'd like to be able to actually move my planes, and then bombard...

 

[Cabbit]

I think that the most fundamentle feature that I want Civ 4 to have is a really accessible way for players to mod aspects of the game.

Civ 3 Conquests finally provided this for Civ 3 (in the form of the editor include w/ the expansion pack) but it took years, with various patches putting the editor half-way there. There are still some things which could be done for Civ 2 that can't be done as nicely in Civ 3.

in short: MODABILITY!!!!

 

[saintly_saint]

make a more realistic civ random generator, cuz there is no way in hell a spearman can beat a bulletproof tank :S

 

[dragon.jade]

Here's a new Idea for CIV4!

In Civ III, designers tried to curb the warmongering path by addition of corruption.
As warmongers extends their empires, they meet increasing difficulties with corruption in the city they conquered.

We, as humans, however know that a single empire stretching over great distances have a natural tendency to break loose into parts. Here's my ideas.

-Create the possibility for all civilizations to have a civil war and break apart (Roman Empire collapse, Secession war, USA freed from England, Liberia spun out of USA). This possibility should be calculated every turn for every city as the culture flip possibility.
But its formula should be different and linked to many parameters:

Rise the possibility of civil war:
- Maximal number of civilizations in game is not reached, either due to previous obliteration or closed position in the start of the game.
- Size of the empire to split.
- Low Overall culture of the empire of the city to split.
- Local culture (city level) of the city to split.
- Proximity to a city that has just rebelled against the Empire versus distance to nearest command building (palace, FP, etc).
- Presence of foreign citizens of destroyed nations in the city.
- Make people unhappy in the whole empire if people are starved intentionally (if loss of people while still having food producing possible in any free tile of the city), be they national or foreign, to prevent ethnic cleansing (well, depending on goverment status naturally; facist people don't apply).
- Civil disorders in the city.
- High Tax level (Yes, make people demanding a minimal luxury level with any government, make them unhappy if you won't give them that: you're free to rise taxes (=treasury+science) to 100% but them they're likelier to revolt).
- City founded by a dead civ.
- "despotic" type of governement.

Lower the possibility of civil war:
- Low taxe level (= high luxury level)
- Proximity to the command building (Palace FP)
- You founded the city.
- By having some telecom tech (writing, telephone, radio and such) that will lower the risk (the fastest the words spreads, the farther they can go).
- High culture.
- "We love the ..." in the city.
- Democratic kind of Government.

The effects:

The new civilization (it can be a revived one) will take the city "as it is". With all of the units contained therein, all of the units in its cultural boundaries at that time, all of the buildings even cultural one (this can be changed as civil war are never bloodfree) and ALL OF THE CULTURE POINTS OF THAT CITY!!!! The Empire will keep the global culture already generated (as usual in case of loss of the city) but the city will have equal culture for the Empire as its new civilization.

As an example of the last point:
England founded Boston far from London.
Boston generated 5 cp per turn for a total of 110 cp when civil war was declared.
Boston now generate 5 cp per turn to America. England still have the 110 cp provided by Boston in their overall culture.
At the fist turn after breakaway, the city of Boston is equally cultured to England (110 cp) and to America (110 cp) with the 5cp per turn gradually increasing the gap.

If city was founded by the Empire, change half the Empire citizen into new civilization citizen. If city was founded by an extinct Civ that is revived, no change (provided there is at least one citizen of the revived civ).


As an bonus idea to this:

Give the unit a nationality (like workers and settlers), with added rule that units will never attack their mother country (they can defend though), make unit nationality depending on producing city population (if 1 citizen is American and 9 english, make that 10% possibility to create an English unit with american nationality).

Add possibility to trade any unit (they retain their nationality).

Yes, I know, that seems another kind of culture flip, but I wondered how American could be starting in 4000 BC...


Now that I had spitted my venom, let the flamings start!!!

Expectively,
Dragon.Jade

 

[mad-bax]

Feature: terrorism

What it does: Allows the distruction of improvements and population and damage to garrison units (much like bombardment now).

How it would work: Once land is covered by cultural borders the barbarian cheifdom takes no further part in the game. Also once 2 civs enter a new age you get the uprisings. Terrorism would extend these features from the Industrial age onward.

When the industrial age is reached by 2 civs, instead of an uprising the barbs produce "invisible" units which behave like invisible artillery.

When a civ builds the Intelligence Agency it will act as an embassy to the Barbarian Chiefdom. It will be possible to pay the barbs to attack another civ on your behalf. It could also be possible to stipulate whether attacks should be weighted towards culture, commercial or military interests.

It should also be possible to discover which civs are sponsoring terrorism through espionage.

When the UN is built it should be possible to table a resolution against a civ that has been found to sponsor terrorism. Sanctions could be simulated with a mass trade embargo against the civ, or military intervention could be simulated with a mass military alliance against the civ. A vote would be required and a choice would be made as to whether the vote would be for sanctions or military intervention. It would be more likely that a civ would vote in favour of Sanctions, but it would require a majority to succeed, in which case ALL civs would instigate the embargo. If a militaristic vote is called then all the civs that vote for it would be tied into a MA even if it is a minority.

I know this is probably not a politically correct idea, but I think it would be a good addition to the game. You could always turn it off in the game setup if you didn't want it.

 

[Grey Fox]

Culturally Different Looking Units

It should make the Asian units look Asian, European look European, etc. It could even go longer and make some units specific for that civilization.


Another idea is to make each civ's units completely different in stats. So that each unit is Unique.

 

[Grey Fox]

Name of Feature: Combat Bonus Flag(Unit Type vs Unit Type)

What this feature should do in the game: It should make it possible to add your own flags to a unit in the editor. Example; a flag that makes the unit a specific type (that exists now), i.e. Mounted, and "Speared". Then you could make "Speared"-units have a combat bonus against "Mounted"-units.

How would this feature work: As I described above, it can make some units better or worse against other types of units.

Gameplay: It will create the need of versatility. Instead of only using Knights as offensive force in the Middle Ages, you will need to bring Pikemen for defense, Longbowmen, Infantry (of the age), etc. Same holds true for the Industrial age, where tank destroyers can be good against tanks, etc...

• AI - The AI will be needed to be programmed to understand this, and take it into consideration when they prepare and wage war.
• Processor Power - Not much more then without it.
• Complexity - It makes the game a little more complex, but not much. It won't even be needed by the player to use the functionality. At least not on the lower levels.
• Programming Complexity - It won't be harder then the terrain bonuses.
• Exploits - Only if the AI is too poorly programmed will this be exploitable.
• Player Decisions - To combat a civ with a lot of knights, build Pikemen, etc. Opens up versability. Easier to combat the lack of resources. Tactical game play.