The Official Civ4 Ideas Thread

[Margim]

Some other ideas -

Terrain

Just to repeat an elsewhere stated idea to have rivers that can be navigated by specified ships, perhaps with only a single capacity transport. Only infantry (ie spearmen, archers, workers, marines) can cross rivers with no improvements, cavalry and armoured units cross at naturally occuring fording points, everything else requires a bridge.

The introduction of plateaus. They'd a nice cosmetic improvement to the map. Also, it'd be a great oppurtunity to implement the idea of minus 1 movement rates for terrain - so it would effectively take 2 turns to move 1 space up the side of a plateau, and the same to get back down.

Improvements

Colonial Headquarters. Established on a one per continent basis, that act similarly to a palace with reduced effects - basically a cross between a palace and a courthouse.

Modern Olympic Games. Once it is built, any progress on the Olympic Games being built by another civ is zeroed and restarts. You maintain control of the Olympics much like some sort of Golden Era of culture and commerce. However, when another civilization builds the Olympics, this Golden Era is transferred to them. You may not rebuild the Olympics until every other civ has built them, and then the oppurtunity to 'host' the games comes to you again.

 

[one_hoop]

I'm still learning Civ3, but spent a substantial ammount of time conquering the first two. At this point, because of the change in air units I'm not quite sure how this would be implemented without returning some of the control taken from the air units.

However, with both air and sea units, I would spend a substantial amount of time on 'patrols' where a given unit would take a standard route each turn (which actually varied some since I was doing it by hand anyway) to see if there were any units out there. This would be like a moving 'sentry' deal where the unit would 'wake' whenever it saw an enemy unit (where you could decide to pursue or return for more support).

eg, fighters in coastal cities would patrol the seaboard to ensure that any approaching ships would be spotted (and usually attacked) before reaching shore.
eg2, submarines would patrol "narrows" (places where there are only 2-5 sea squares between continents/archipegeo-arms)

So, it would have to work where you set a toggle to begin the patrol and then moved the unit accordingly, ending the toggle in the same square as it began in. Note that it would be a great help to fighters on aircraft carriers if the patrols were relative to the starting position rather than an absolute map position!

=========================

While abuses of the Freight Unit were rampant (oh, instant WoW!), I miss the ability to set up trade routes to transfer food. Now that the food requirement for settlers(workers) is abolished, it is not so necessary, but it is totally not unreasonable. I'm ~fairly~ certain that NYC gets some of their food from the Midwest, California, and Mexico!

=========================

oops... there's more, but I got "stuck" reading Bamspeedy's Beyond Sid and it's well past time to go....

M@

 

[Benderino]

Here's another:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=60353

It's in regards to another trait.

 

[Balastulin]

Originally posted by sealman
A re-worked rail system that limits the ability to move across the world on one turn. Maybe base movement *6

For example
Knights have 2 movement points without roads/rails
6 points with roads
12 points with rails

Rail should be limited, but base movement shouldn't affect it. A knight can't travel faster by rail by running in its carriage.

Base rail movement should be 12 and when units travel by rail but haven't reached destination they should have a little train beside them. In addition, to make rails still better than road, even if a unit has travelled, say, the 12 squares max, it still has all of its movement points.

 

[Buckets]

Government 'slider'

Similar to the 'science slider', I'd like to see a slider or series of sliders take the place of limited government choices. One example would be an 'economic slider' where at one end would be socialism and the other capitalism. One would give a gold bonus to all cities and the other a shield bonus. Another slider could be a 'liberty slider', democracy vs dictatorship. One end could give more stability and the other more happiness. This would allow custom governments, and hypothetical situations such as a democratic socialism. Change history!

A safeguard against spending one turn in socialism and the next in capitalism and back and so on, would be to allow only small increments per turn.

This would not be hard to grasp or implement, imho. The AI would still have to make situational judgements as it does now on governmental decisions and taxation.

Another interrelated feature could be faction anger (i.e. anger the communists, and please the capitalists, or vice verse). Grallon was getting at this 'faction' aspect which i think would be excellent. Also, refer to a great game called 'Tropico' for an excellent model of internal politics. It had the following factions: capitalists, communists, intellectuals, religious, militarists, and enviromentalists. You could never please everyone in that game and had to pick a few to focus on while trying to stamp out the others. Sorry to digress, but if anyone could think of a way to implement this, please fly with it.

One thing to look for in a new feature is the ability to macromanage/micromanage. If the only way to properly utilise it is to tweak every city or click dozens of units every turn, it will probably detract from most people's fun. Something to keep in mind.

 

[Benderino]

I have that game (Tropico) and I like your idea about the sliders, for it really allows the player to be individual and creative with his/her nation.

 

[LeroyJr]

I think the AI needs to get reworked so that it goes after real cities in war instead of going for the fringe tundra towns. No stratigic thinking on the AI's part.

I always laugh with a friend of mine that the AI is going after Minot, North Dakota again. She said she must visit that place sometime just to see if it is such a great strategical city.

My point is that the AI will always go after the weakest link when it starts a war. If Canada attacked the USA they would go after Minot, North Dakota first, then maybe Butte, Montana and if everything goes well maybe Rochester, NY. Meanwhile when I got my turn I would beeline for Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Winnipeg and Calgary. Gut their entire production ability by taking out their production centers. AI does not think strategic like that, just thinks about the best chance it has to win.

My favorite move was when I was about even with India in one game. Gahndi declared war on me and this time decided to forgo Minot to make a march to maybe Tallahasee, Florida or something. Marched 40 Cavalry units three tiles deep into my northern border. Needless to say their was a ton of dead horses soon after. Forever to be known as Gahndi's peacefull march to the sea for salt.

Also the AI needs to learn how to focus its forces better. Often those forces that took out Minot, Butte and Rochester could have combined forces to take out Detroit and/or Boston and hurt my production centers. Instead they randomly attack with no focus on non key centers.

 

[Hornhelm]

Terrain and resources

This is a complete overhaul of the entire terrain/worker/resource/trade system!

All terrain should start out as 'wild', and be transformed by workers to 'tamed' or 'settled' land tiles. This would enable a ton of realistic and very playable features in many areas of the game.

-Wild terrain should provide meager food and production, and be represented by hunter-gatherer-type tiles like forest game, bison, wheat, berries, fish, stone etc. When worked on, however, these traits disappear and are replaced with the tamed tile type, like farms, orchards, vineyards, mines, livestock pastures and so on, which all provide must higher yields. Some wild terrain will remain useful in its natural state right up until modern age, and some wild terrain should be kept natural in the interest of the nation (national parks) and world (rainforest). Too much abuse of the environment should cause unhappiness and foreign reputation loss in the modern age.

-All units should require logistical support, and wild terrain should be able to provide units (in small enough quantities, such as in ancient times) with their base food value. This helps nomadic armies to be able to cross large distances without cities backing them up, and stops armies crossing mountains and deserts for a while.

-Luxury and bonus resources should be found in specific geographic locations (even more specific than in Civ3), but should be able to be copied to cities that are in the same climate range as the resource was found in. As time goes on the benefit derived from them should improve. So, coffee may be found only in the space of an eight-by-eight tile area in the temperate zone, but by the modern age all civs with cities within that zone should be producing and selling it. Focus on one resource should preclude the production of other possible resource production in a city.

-You should be able to choose how much you want to exploit the land. Say, three levels - 1st is long term sustainable with low yield, second is short-term or current-level sustainable with medium yield, and 3rd will eventually cause the loss of the bonus resource in wild terrain and pollution in tamed terrain, but with very high yield. (Do you maintain a small population and low development from the bison/moa/auroch/giant sloth, or do you develop fast in the hope of a future better replacement when it disappears?) The second and third settings should be tech-dependant, of course.

-You should need certain amounts of goods to build improvements and units. One iron source is not enough to supply all of the Persia's Immortals. The more you have, the less its worth. This also ties in the the exploitation of the land - you can, in a clinch, overwork your quarries, mines and oil fields, but the more they yield, the more it costs and faster it is exhausted. Techs shoud allow the ability to determine the amount remaining in any given site.

 

[Hornhelm]

And just to add about the coffee, the more civs are producing something, the less you get from doing the same. That would encourage civs to diversify.

 

[Hornhelm]

Another couple of ideas:

-The wealth and income per turn of a country should depend on the AVERAGE income generation of all your cities, as well as the amount of luxury and strategic resources your civ is getting from within its borders or by trade. This would allow small civs to remain wealthy and powerful vs big backward civs (who still have the greatest potential).

-The growth of cities should depend on the TOTAL amount of food produced or traded for by the civ, as well as the amount of gold produced in the city relative to its population. If the city is producing a lot of gold, the civ's surplus food goes to expanding that city over the others.

 

[Ben E Gas]

I will always write this in these types of threads:

Bring back the in game cheat menu.

 

[HalfBadger]

Originally posted by Clown2TheLeft

I've often wondered why not have a shunned civ to represent traditional enemies. That is, Carthage will always have a poor attitude towards Rome, France will always have one toward England, The Dutch and Spain... everyone toward the US...

Hmm. Following that principle, we'd have to put Canada in the game as a civ, just so everyone has someone to be nice to.


Later!

--The Clown to the Left [/B]

Adding Canada would be a great idea!

 

[CaptainCivFreak]

The in game cheat menu would be useful for modding, because I cant figure out debug mode. I know how to turn it on and add units, but thats about it...

 

[casual_moose]

Wild terrain should provide meager food and production, and be represented by hunter-gatherer-type tiles like forest game, bison, wheat, berries, fish, stone etc. When worked on, however, these traits disappear and are replaced with the tamed tile type, like farms, orchards, vineyards, mines, livestock pastures and so on, which all provide must higher yields. Some wild terrain will remain useful in its natural state right up until modern age, and some wild terrain should be kept natural in the interest of the nation (national parks) and world (rainforest). Too much abuse of the environment should cause unhappiness and foreign reputation loss in the modern age.

i like that idea but it would have to take a very small amount of turns or it would take a really long time to get most of the tiles "tamed"

i like the idea of the national parks and rainforest though

 

[Syterion]

I think a great addition would instead of playing as a faction, how about playing as a religion? You would have to start small with a leader(preferably), convert people, through war(crusade) or just word of mouth, spread, gain power, have power over factions that have a sponsored religion or a majority to do what you want.

It could be somewhat offensive, but not really. You could choose if you want to have a hierarchy for the leaders, like the Papacy, or you could choose to be polytheistic, monotheistic, or whatever. You would fight splits in the religion and division of your followers, and you would choose new leaders who can convert people, and thwart the wishes other religions.

Different religions came at different times, so we would have to make it so they start at the same time , but in preset scenarios you could have the religion starting at its actual time, with other religions forming and you have to compete with new foes every few hundred years.

I think this would be great, a nice bit of variety.

 

[ybbor]

Originally posted by Syterion
I think a great addition would instead of playing as a faction, how about playing as a religion? You would have to start small with a leader(preferably), convert people, through war(crusade) or just word of mouth, spread, gain power, have power over factions that have a sponsored religion or a majority to do what you want.

It could be somewhat offensive, but not really. You could choose if you want to have a hierarchy for the leaders, like the Papacy, or you could choose to be polytheistic, monotheistic, or whatever. You would fight splits in the religion and division of your followers, and you would choose new leaders who can convert people, and thwart the wishes other religions.

Different religions came at different times, so we would have to make it so they start at the same time , but in preset scenarios you could have the religion starting at its actual time, with other religions forming and you have to compete with new foes every few hundred years.

I think this would be great, a nice bit of variety.

that seems like a whole new game. the purpose of civ is to start, build & devolp an empire, not a religon. That seems like it's gone from bieng a political/militarical/economic game to a religous game where everything centers around religon. where in the current civ everything you did usually inmproved one thing, and eliminated potential for another, it seems like your idea is to have everything focus on one point. it makes an interesting game, probably fun to play, but it should be it's own game, not take over civ

[note: no offense intended to anyone]

 

[PUBH]

I posted this here at Civ Fanatics awhile ago in some misc thread. I think it is a good idea and I sort of went into and some possibilities a bit more and thought it would be worth adding to this thread:




I'd like to see:

The ability to give units to another civ.

In other words, you should be able to just give units to another civ if you want to help them out or something (IE, you don't have to ask for anything in return).

But you should also be able to setup deals with other civs, like, "I will give you these units if you give me..." X total gold, or X gold a turn.

It would also be nice to be able to loan units to other civs.

Such as, "I will give you these units for X turns if you give..." X total gold, X gold a turn, or etc (for resources, luxeries, etc). Also perhaps a feature that you can loan units for the period at which a civ is at war with another (IE, "I will loan you these units for the period you are at war with the Zulu"). But also other features to the loan like, at the end of the period, you can renew the loan, or the loan simply ends. Also if the civ who you loan to loses any of the units (like in battle; or if like a human, disbands them, lol), you could set like a stipulation like "For every unit not returned, you will ____", which could be like a total gold payment, or gold per turn. This way if you loan out like 20 mech infantry and 30 modern armors to say Germany to fight China, and you only get 18 mechs and 10 moderns back at the end of the loan period, and you want 100 gold for each one not returned, then at the end of the loan period the civ should pay you 2200 gold.

Also maybe like an ability under loaning units to be like "under your flag", or "under the flag" of the civ you loan to.

In other words, if you loaned like 4 modern armors to a civ "under your flag", it would be sort of like a "peace keeping" force that the civ you loan to controls. And doing this, it might affect your attitude with the other civs. Like, if the civ you loan it to (say Persia) is at war with like Egypt, and England is "good friends" with Egypt, then England would become not so happy with you (but it shouldn't get down to war because your not actually controlling your units). But if France for example is "good friends" with Persia, then France should then become "happier" with you because your helping their "friend". Overall, doing this should have a positive effect all around the world, because it would sort of be like a small "UN peace keeping force". It should make other civs on your side or not involved more willing to trade resources with you, loan/give you units, pay higher gold amounts for things, etc.

The other option, "under the flag" of the civ you loan to, should work the same, except... it shouldn't affect the attitudes of any of the civs. In other words, nobody should become "happier" or "madder" at you for doing this. The only thing that should possibly happen due to this is that perhaps your own citizens become slightly discontent that part of their nation's military isn't "under their flag".

Just some thoughts and ideas I would like to see in some upcoming version/patch of Civ...

 

[M4 Carbine]

I like where you are going with this 'barron'

OK, lets really blue sky it.

How bout each city is its own sim-city? You get to lay it out and build it. Generic site plans available for the urban plan deprived. Don't like sim-city?, ok insert Rome, or Zeus, or the Egyptian building game. Micromanagers can go nuts! place every temple, every building of any kind that can be constructed, in advance and let it grow "organically" over time, once complete, it affects the city and the civilization. Lots more zoom levels so you can go from street corners to a view from high, high above one or more of your continents. And the cities can grow together. The word for world is city. You don't have to build roads, they grow organically between cities with something to trade. Interstates might take some direction. But what the game is about is cities and their boarder growth that makes your civilization.

Watch the inhabitants march around, use the parks and stadiums, trafic on roads learn the automobile and watch the modle T evolve to the VW bug. You don't even have to win the game to have a good time.

In addition to barron's awesome idea, I would like to see

1. The ability to trade arms/weapons between civs for either other units, gold, resources, whatever. This has been mentioned before and I think it's a GREEEAAAT idea. If I remember correctly we had that option in Civ II. Should've kept it!
2. Hills and other terrain's art should be made to reflect the terrain that surrounds it ... for example it bothers me to see lush green grasslands turn into deserts instantaneously from one tile to another ... or grassy hills in the middle of a region of tundra ... the map generation needs to be improved upon, in my humble opinion!
3. As mentioned earlier ... it would be nice to see air units move like all the other units, and I would really like to see missiles travel the distance to their targets!
4. Lastly, for now , I'd like to see the ability to build colonies and take advantage of bonus resources including whales and fish by the possiblility of a fishing colony of some sort. Also being able to build harbors and airstrips in colonies for the purpose of connectivity.[/list=1]
   Questions and/or Feedback is appreciated!

 

[the_scotsman]

I would like 2 see civs having the chance to gain naval leaders so they can create powerful fleets.

being able 2 move food between cities would be useful, e.g if one city is starving and another has a huge surplus it wud be useful 2 be able 2 giv the surplus to the starving city.

bringin in off shore oil (e.g the North Sea) which can be utilised by building an oil rig on that square.

lastly id like 2 see cruise missiles being loaded on 2 destroyers or AEGIS cruisers. this wud make them much more useful.

thats all i can think of for now!!

 

[Mad Danny]

3D terrain but keeping the units/buildings/etc. as 2D sprites like in Rise Of Nations (the buildings are 2D I'm pretty sure) and Railroad Tycoon 2 to save processor overhead.also here is my idea for revised combat mixing a few ideas and adding several of my own.

Rather than having a unit attack another unit, the right-click menu for an enemy unit has an 'attack' option whereby you select any adjacent units for combat and it switches to a 3D real-time battle of the units over the terrain (note 3D terrain idea) where things like pikemen or archer units are really groups of five or so men (maybe 5 men with each having 1, 2 or 3 HP based on the squad experience so a battle might wound men but leave a full recoverable squad, or kill men so that the squad has less attack) and tanks really being 3 tanks with 10 HP each - all non-organic units having fixed armour values but still being able to upgrade attack and defence stats. The battle then plays out with all attacking units and all units in attacked square. This allows for such tactics as pincer or surrounding movements so if a group of enemy units hold a mountain fortress against one front they get a high defence but if attacked from multiple fronts lose a lot of defence. that also means the defender can opt for further adjacent units to support the defenders. Thus a battle takes place over a maximum 5x5 space according to the main map for some epic battles that not only take into account the terrain type, but also the adjacent terrain types regarding strategic effects. if battling in a city this means the fight happens between the buildings and through neighbouring farmlands so you can see civilian casualties and building destruction as they happen. Another, more detailed example would be a fortress manned by 3 musketeer units being attacked by two medieval infantry units, two archery units, one cavalry until and a catapult travelling via road. Thus there would be 15 musketmen defending from the battlements (or bunker in modern age) and having clear shots on the roadway, being charged by 5 horsemen (who hit-and-run so attack then retreat again) followed by 10 medieval infantry who can't attack at range so need to raid the fort directly but whose defence is marked against the defenders' offence similar to in a Role-Playing Game giving them chances to evade being shot, meanwhile 10 archers stand back on their original space bombarding the fort alongside the catapult, with the arrows damaging the musketeers and the catapult damaging the fortifications as well (fortresses and buildings would have a limited number of hit points as well so sappers would make a viable sabotage unit if escorted by riflemen).

Based on this perhaps a military ambulance unit which can heal units in the field between battles.

Surprisingly such a grand idea would not require so much extra processing power - the game switches to the 3D battle but for the rest of the game all it needs to store is the number of men in each squad and their HP and the squad experience - so basically like stacked units recorded simultaneously. Although if the units and buildings were 3D, and battles were done in cinematic camera angles rather than static overhead.. messy but possible

The idea is based a little on Advance Wars and would also mean battles aren't automatic 'kill one unit or the other' but might drag on a bit sometimes like if there are so many units in battle and each side brings reinforcements.

I also second the idea of railroad movement being limited to 12 - although offer a variation in railroad movement being 8 from steam power, but then 10 with electricity, and 12 with one of the more advanced engineering-based techs like manufacturing, of course electric trains would need a level 2 railroad (powered rails) so building a road up would go:
1.) road (standard 3x movement)
2.) railroad (8 moves with steam train)
3.) powered rail (allows 10 moves with electric trains, and 12 with upgraded trains)

I would also like to see farms brought back - level 2 irrigation, but with some differences. Aside from the food point bonus for cities with supermarkets, make it possible to farm lands not within city radii, with each farmed (not just irrigated) tile providing one food for that continent (as opposed to city radius farms providing 2 food) so resource-base cities need not starve and starving cities can import aid - how this would work is cities with supermarkets would take the extra food in the order of the city getting least food per turn (hence preference given to starving cities) and for equal cities the food alternates per turn. Of course those cities would need to be connected to the farms by a railroad network or rail-to airport network or rail-to-harbour through other cities.

The SimCity idea is similar to one I had recently, but instead make it more a matter of placing buildings manually so making all wonders visible would be easier, maybe zone areas to automatic housing and such (or residential (population cap), commercial (commerce bonus) and industrial (shield production) like in SimCity) and only build main roads manually thus making it possible to allocate spaces for certain buildings or demolish houses to make way for them and based on residential zoning houses might be simple homes or if there is less space allocated for them then they will be replaced by larger apartments and eventually really big housing buildings(each square being 10x10 building spaces perhaps?). Mayhaps also eventually if the buildings could be built outwards into the city radius (just the 3x3 radius though - not the full 5x5 minus corners) so a really major metropolis could be constructed but it could mean replacing farmland with residential and commerce buildings and having to rely on outlying farmland imports. It would also mean military units in the city would automatically be defending all 9 squares if the city were attacked so if any neighbouring fortress were attacked they could take direct reinforcements from the city.

Relating to the cross-country farming idea maybe mines that aren't in city radii could generate 1 wealth per turn rather than shields in cities (kind of like wealth - perhaps implement a 2:1 conversion so a terrain with no shields normally couldn't provide enough mining resources for it but a bonus resource mountain that produces 3 shields normally once mined could provide 2 gold then (from the 4 shields). This ability would need a certain tech though. It would also be nice if after a tech like chemistry (or maybe a more advanced counterpart) it would be possible in the right-click menu to be able to see exactly how many turns a strategic resource will last so one could plan ahead.

Visible bridges would be nice and would also relate to the 3D battle concepts when fighting across rivers.

Finally in negotiations I would like to see options like trading land - so you could maybe ask a neighbouring civ to give you a few adjacent squares if they own the land but it only affects your city radius (would need access to a larger mini-map then though) in exchange for some units and some money or such. This would be extremely useful in strong or fixed alliances when one player might lose several valuable city squares due to the timing of their ally's culture expansion.