The Official Civ4 Ideas Thread

[fehler]

Too much to read all at once.

Ok, I'd like a true "globe" of a world.

When I improve my palace, I expect it to look that way in the city view screen.

We need some natural disasters! Earthquakes, floods, volcanos (but no damn Aliens, thank you). Take out cities, take out improvements, radically change terrian (new islands appear, mountains spring up or tumble down to hills, the sea splits a continant). Almost all of the ancient Wonders were lost to earthquakes, why is the game different?

And of course, with natural disasters, comes foreign aid diplomacy.

Buy/sell units. These units retain their nationality, even when upgraded, and will have a chance to revert if you go to war against their home country. Also can't produce great leaders with bought units, and can't create "mixed" armys (too unruly) until Military Tradition.

Civil wars/civ splits.

Maps traded before Navigation should be of poor quality. Can't trade Ancient tech until Writing, can't trade Middle Age tech until Printing Press.

Immigration. When bordering another civ, or having a harbor connection, then new pop in your city has a chance of getting the nationality of the bordering/harboring civ.

Mountains are huge obsticals! You shouldn't be able to move onto a mountain until you discover Engineering.

 

[KingAlbert]

Originally posted by Ukraineboy
Ok.. this is the most annoying thing.. of ALL time in Civ3... Spearman beating Tanks!!!!! or Riflemen beating an Army of Infantry! or Musketmen beating Infantry... it is STUPID, I don't CARE if they have defensive points etc... Infantry would ALWAYS beat old riflemen with crappy rifles... honestly, Infantry have helmets, they have bolt action rifles, and they are trained! Riflemen, are freaking guys with crappy gun, the old Civil War guns... no matter how many times in real life INFANTRY WOULD BEAT GODDAMN RIFLEMEN! now.. to fix this I propose this:

A Minus Percentage depending on Technology...

If you have a Riflemen, and he is fighting another Riflemen, sure it could beat him cause its high damage.. or if a Riflemen is beating Cavalry... but when a Riflemen is fighting Infantry, the Riflemen should get a -%50 defense/attack effectivity, because Riflemen are consider "obsolete", so they should get a deduction in effectivity... I am tired and tired of seeing Infantry beating by Spearman.. YES, SPEARMAN.... THEY DONT EVEN HAVE GUNS FOR CHRIST SAKE!

FIX IT PLEASE! maybe even in the next patch

Sorry it's a long time since I read this thread but I'd like to react to Ukraineboy's post (not really concerning civ3 but sort of a proof that the spearman vs tank bug did happen in real life).

In the 19th century British troops were massacred by zulu's at Iswhandla (Its not the correct spelling sorry). The British had guns, Zulus were spearman. The British were outnumber by about 1 to 20. Taking into account the average rate of fire it is estimated that the British soldiers would need 12 minutes to kill all the Zulus while the estimated time for Zulu to reach the British lines in full sprint was about 16 minutes. So while the British had all the odds in their favor (superior firepower) they still got massacred. Why? there lines were spread too thin, weakening reducing their rate of fire and creating gaps in the lines through which zulus could infiltrate and surround the British.

Although the spearman vs tank bug is annoying, real life has shown that motivated inferior force can beat a superior force.

For those who are interested, I got my information from a national geographic documentary about the battle.

 

[Mr. Cackle]

I had this idea in the car --

Ok, well I'm not too fond of the whole concept of "barbarians" because if you make a city next to an encampment it just disappears and you get stuff. But in reality, there have been small, isolated barbarian tribes that have risen up and blossomed into organized nations. So here's my proposal.

All the goody huts and bab camps are gone. No more. HOWEVER, we introduce "non-playable civs" to replace the barbarians. They have various aggression levels, from wipe em all out to peaceloving hippie folk in the wilderness. They are able to build only the bare necessities, i.e. Temple, granary, settler, worker, warrior, spearman, etc. They produce less commerce, shields, and more corruption than normal civs. They are the only civs (normal civs can't in other words) that can "culture flip" and will do so fairly easily if you have been around them long enough and awe them with military, scientific, cultural prowess.

If they join you, a pop-up appears and says "X would like to join you as a (either part of your nation or semi-autonomous state) You can either accept or decline.

Basically, they are able to progress through the ages slowly, gaining techs only when 1/2 of the civs they have come in contact with have gained that tech. If they get enough power and culture then they have a chance of becoming a normal civ.

What do you think?

 

[RedAlert]

I would also like to see more UU and/or more flavor units for each civ/ group of civs.

Another thing that would be neat is if there were more ways of grouping multiple units togeter (battalions, divisions, etc.) than just armies. Either that, or having multi-figure units instead of it looking like one spearman fighting one swordsman.

Also - Mr. Cackle - great idea! That would be a very interesting, and in my opinion, welcome concept. Although the exact information/concept would need a little tweaking to be put into a working game, I would look forward to seeing something like that in Civ4

 

[Samurai Matt]

It sounds good, but I'd still like barbarians and goody huts in the game. Nothing beats a little target practice for troops and advancement in the Ancient Era better then barbarians.

Anyways, I have a ton of ideas for Civ4, and I only just now noticed this post, so here are a few... (Note, I don't have the time to look through all these pages, so forgive me if it's already been imagined.)

Civil War - A civilization splits in two and your cities join either the “original” side or the “new” side, and then they both fight until a solution is reached.
Citizen Liberation War - You fight only for the citizens of another nation, because of their constant abuse and forced labor. It is won when the “liberator” nation captures the capital city and installs a new ruler to lead the nation in a better form of government.
Military War - You fight only to destroy the military power of another nation. Once that power is gone or reduced greatly, and that nation has surrendered, your troops automatically return to your nearest authentic city and you give back all the cities you captured from that civ. No growth or production allowed in these cities while you hold them and bombardment always targets military related improvements/wonders/units.
Military Base: This is a base that can be placed in any friendly or neutral territory, and can act as a barracks to heal and create military land units.
Seaport: This is a base that can be placed in any friendly or neutral territory next to an ocean, and can act as a harbor to heal and create military sea units.
Canal: This can be placed on any land tile next to an ocean or another canal. It provides a trustable route through land for sea units to pass through.
Lumber Mill: This can be placed in any forest terrain, and can increase the shield production of forests and forested mountains.
Tunnel: Can be built in any terrain except ocean, and provides a better trade route than roads and railroads, plus removes the movement costs of mountain and hills altogether.

Also, workers should be able enter into the sea and do things, like building Oil Drills to get offshore sources of oil, and to build a bridge, or to build an undersea tunnel.

 

[RedAlert]

Those are all excellent ideas. I couldn't have said it better myself. I especially like the idea for different types of wars. Having these incorporated into a Civ4 would definately open up the gameplay options a lot more

 

[Fanny Brice]

Holy Cow! This thread is growing fast!

Just a quick thought. Civ 4 should come "out of the box" with the option to start your game at the beginning of any Age. Playing Civ3, I usually get to the middle of the Modern Age and the game is over. There are a few techs I have never researched.

 

[Miluss]

Originally posted by Samurai Matt
Civil War - A civilization splits in two and your cities join either the “original” side or the “new” side, and then they both fight until a solution is reached.
Citizen Liberation War - You fight only for the citizens of another nation, because of their constant abuse and forced labor. It is won when the “liberator” nation captures the capital city and installs a new ruler to lead the nation in a better form of government.
Military War - You fight only to destroy the military power of another nation. Once that power is gone or reduced greatly, and that nation has surrendered, your troops automatically return to your nearest authentic city and you give back all the cities you captured from that civ. No growth or production allowed in these cities while you hold them and bombardment always targets military related improvements/wonders/units.
Military Base: This is a base that can be placed in any friendly or neutral territory, and can act as a barracks to heal and create military land units.
Seaport: This is a base that can be placed in any friendly or neutral territory next to an ocean, and can act as a harbor to heal and create military sea units.
Canal: This can be placed on any land tile next to an ocean or another canal. It provides a trustable route through land for sea units to pass through.
Lumber Mill: This can be placed in any forest terrain, and can increase the shield production of forests and forested mountains.
Tunnel: Can be built in any terrain except ocean, and provides a better trade route than roads and railroads, plus removes the movement costs of mountain and hills altogether.

Also, workers should be able enter into the sea and do things, like building Oil Drills to get offshore sources of oil, and to build a bridge, or to build an undersea tunnel.

I am sorry if this post is too long or contains some errors, but this is my first post so please excuse me for any problems.

I think that civil war is excellent idea (I got the same idea anyway). I remember times back when I played Civ I and one of opponents was Russia - very big and powerful, technologically supreme, and obvoiusly heading to erase my civ from the planet. So the plan was, I nuked their capital which was conveniently located at the seashore and captured it. Russia splitted into two nations (the other was Chinese, IIRC) and falled into civil war, what saved me some time and trouble.

Apart from another tactical option, which civil war gives, it brings the game also closer to the real world (not to mention how USA formed an independent state). For example, a civ may go into civil war if more than 25% of citizens are unhappy.

As for other types of war, I have mixed feelings. Generally, the concept of military war may be imitated also in current civ3. Citizen Liberation War would presumably require civil war pending in the target country. Interesting, how would the diplomacy screen look then, I mean, there should be two leaders of civ in question appear, or will the uprising group be identified as new civ?


Military base and seaport are also good idea. The problem is, what conditions enable its creation (like consent of friendly civ?) and do they allow to use the terrain under the base by home civ or not (I can imagine that AI installs lot of bases in my territory reducing my productiveness and/or food supply). Maybe they should require some maintenance to be paid to the civ where it is installed as well.

Tunnel is IMHO well represented by railroads laid in mountains, and I cannot imagine reduction of movement cost for railroads in mountains. But I like idea of Canal and Lumber Mill. After all, Montreal is big seaport and it is not located at the shore.

I think also that barbarians should stay in the game, and they should not be replaced by "non-playable civs" (this was idea of Mr. ****le?). Why, because it is unfair that one civ has a neighboring friendly tribe which can be easily assimiliated and give huge boost to expansion, and other will have to fight some extreme warmongers. I think that barbarians should be able to learn some techs or have possibility to upgrade their units (a warrior in modern era is no real threat to MAs and MIs). Maybe they should be able to form a state in certain point of the game. I have one of the games where Babylonians were erased by Persians and no one settled in this land for (currently) over 150 years. I think that barbarians in such a situation should be able to form a state/civ and get technologies that other civs possess (not all of them, but say the ones which everybody knows).

 

[scorpamaniac]

Hi I am an idiot and cant even post this in the right place but im desperate,
i have played civ3 for a while however when i play on the largest map wh I reload my saved games, the error some up
saying 'Data CITYl0 error' or something like that,
and the map comes up with no cities,
is there any remedy for that and can i retrieve my saved games?

Sorry, thanks for the help

 

[Csaba]

___CLIMATE ZONES___

I think that krunvald has posted a very good
idea (Dec 30, 2003):
------------------------------------------------
While the climatic zones would be the traditional:
Arctic
Subarctic
Temperate
SubTropical (desert)
Tropical
[...]
Historically, civilizations with access to better
plant and animal resources early in their existence
faired much better than those that did not.
There are relatively few good crops in the world
and even fewer domesticatable animals.
Furthermore, civilizations early in
history found it difficult to expand out of the
area's where the crops they knew grew.
-------------------------------------------------
Just some additions and clarifications:

- in the real world history the constraints of
the "climate determined agriculture" were quite
effective even in the 19th century (the only
sizeable European colony in Africa was created in
South Africa, where the temperate zone European
crops succeeded while the native African (tropical)
crops failed). Therefore this restriction (workers and
settlers can operate only in their own climate zone)
must be maintained in the game until the Modern Age.
It will be a good measure against ICS, too.

- irrigation is necessary only in the subtropical/desert
zone (imagine: irrigation on the British Isles ???),
in the other zones the "agricultural improvement"
operation should be called "cultivation" and must not
depend on the availability of rivers/lakes. The
"cultivation" should be a quicker operation than
"irrigation" but if one does not want to harm the
subtropical civs then there should be lots of forests
in the beginning in the tropical and temperate zones
which must be cleared first. An irrigated desert tile
should produce at least as much food as a cultivated
grassland.

- the workers should be able to create herds (cattle,
horse, ...) on tiles near cities after the Explorers
of the civ. have found a wild herd (and if the "Animal
Domestication" technology is already known). The food
bonus from a herd should be minimal (or zero, in
fact animals eat much more fodder than the food they
provide), but if a city has enough traction animals
(eg. one herd for every 2..3 population point) then
it must get a great (at least 50%) production and
commerce increment (I think that the best "single
sentence" answer to the question "why the native
American civilizations were so backward when the
Spaniards found them?" is the following:
"they had no horse,ox,whatever drawn carts").

___CIVIL WAR___

(it existed in Civ1, and Samurai Matt (Jan 08, 2004)
and Miluss (Jan 09, 2004) posted similar suggestions,
but I think that some additions and clarifications
are necessary here, too)

Probably the most disliked idea of Civ3 was the heavy
corruption, which was intended to stop ICS, but it is
not realistic at all and just forced the players to
find awkward methods (ring city placement, palace jump)
to circumvent it. In the real world history the
civil/independence wars are limiting the sizes of
the empires (at least in the long run). This concept
could be added to the game with the following rules:

- a civilization is not eliminated from the game
when all the cities of it are conquered
(it just "gets under colonial rule")
- there is no simple method to destroy a conquered
city (no "abandon / raze it" commands)
- the inhabitants of the conquered cities maintain
their original national identity (even if the
cities are growing - Indians remain Indians even
if they are ruled by the British)
- if a civ. has spent enough time (20...30 turns?)
under colonial rule then there is a chance (increasing
with time and the number of cities / total population
of it) that it will declare it's independence
(and will be restarted on the current
technology level of the colonizers!)
- even if a civilization builds cities with it's
own settlers far from it's capital then there
is a chance that those cities (if they are big and
numerous enough) declare their independence and
continue the game as a new AI civ
- there should be some minimum conditions, eg. the
"declaration of independence" is possible only
if there are at least 5 cities at least 12 tiles
far from the colonizer's capital and one of these
cities (the future capital) is less than 6 tiles
far from the other 4 cities

___MINOR IDEAS___

Fraction handling: in the current game when you are
building something (or researching a technology) then the
unnecessary shields (or research points) added in the
last turn are lost. One can take care of it (adjusting
the tile usage of the city or the science percentage
in every "last turn") but it means terrible
micromanagement. These "lost fractions" should be
converted into gold (or utilized by some other method).

Palace move: the game designers should decide whether the
palace is something valuable or not. If it is expensive
then there should be a serious punishment (eg. 20...30
turns of anarchy) if a civ. looses it because of ANY
reason. If it is inexpensive then building a new
one should be rather cheap (like a temple or
a courthouse). If building a palace is expensive
but a lost palace is immediately recreated for nothing
then the "palace jump" trick will remain in the game.
I think it would be better to have the "cheap palace"
option because the usual starting locations
(frequently on seaside) are not good for a
"central capital" (supposing that "distance from
capital" will be important in Civ4, too).
If the palace is cheap then the "fake palace building"
trick also would be impossible (players will not
begin to build a palace just because they want to
accumulate shields for a wonder).

City list display: it should have various (selectable)
aspects, like "show buildings", "show units" etc.
Especially useful would be a "show problems"
aspect, with the following signals:
- civil disorder
- polluted tile
- unimproved (but utilized) tile
- enemy units near the city
- undefended city
- no food surplus
- no shield surplus
- food shortage
- city needs aquaduct
- heavy corruption

Minimum city distance: the worst form of ICS is to
build many small cities close to each other. There
should be a rule that you cannot build a city very
close to an other one. I think that a 3 tiles
minimum distance would be reasonable.

Moving units on enemy territory: railroads
cannot be used (you cannot get rolling stock quickly)
but roads should have the same effect as on friendly
territory.

Disadvantage of mounted units: these should be
less effective if they are fighting in a city
(even tanks, too), but in open terrain they
should be fully effective against any defensive unit.

It would be more realistic if the military
units have no "hit points" but "supply points".
If a unit has lost some supply points in a
battle then it could be resupplied by the
following methods:
- return to friendly territory and execute a
"resupply" operation (not necessarily in a
city with Barracks, it should be enough to
have a connecting road from the current location
to a Barracks)
- execute a "confiscate" operation in the
enemy territory (possible only for ancient
and medieval units, and less effective
than the "resupply")
- get supplies from a Supply Column (it would be
a new unit, similar to the Caravan/Freight of
Civ2, but usable only for resupplying military
units)
The "resupply" and "confiscate" operations must
be automatic if a military unit is idle in a turn.

It should be cheaper (much cheaper) to upgrade
an existing military unit than to create a
new one. It is very unrealistic when a city is
defended by a stone age Warrior while a Tank
is being built in it.

It should be possible to establish permanent
food/shield trade routes between "food intensive"
and "shield intensive" cities.

Sorry for the long post, but I collected this
ideas for a long time and it is simpler to send
them in one message.

 

[Fanny Brice]

Another quick request.

The end game replay is a very favored feature. On this note, in the "hall of fame" or top scores section it would be great to have at least a picture of the world map of the listed games. After several games, it is hard to remember the details of your win that got you into the annals of history in the first place. The ability to save and attach the replay to this list would be better, but at least a picture of the world map would be nice.

 

[Hakim]

Mulitplayer option: two persons can play one civ cooperatively eg by having different roles in controlling the civ. Different GUIs would be required since some decisions can't be taken by someone having the other "role".

 

[Hakim]

On the spherical map: one way to implement it could be to make the world a Buckminster dome consisting of hexagons and pentagons.

(large picture)
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/gsapp/BT/EEI/HEATLOAD/0425-69.jpg

As you can see it's made up of triangles, but all triangles belong to a hexagon or pentagon which would be the map's atomic element. The only problem is that the sides have slightly different lengths so the terrain border have to be calculated.

The part of the map visible on the main screen could be flattened (this would mean a slightly strange look compared to how it's really looks, just like in an atlas).

I will be disappointed if the map isn't spherical in Civ IV.

 

[timberwolf4545]

I think it would be a great idea to be able to rally all instances of a specific fortified unit. When you have activated say a Cavalry, right clicking will give you an option to wake all cavalry units or rally all cavalry to a continental rally point. Besides military units, it would be good for awaking all sleeping workers. You would also be able to wake all units from the Military Advisor screen.

 

[casual_moose]

by rallying all cavs/whatever do you mean set a rally point where they go when there created or move all cav on the map to that point? Eiether one is a good idea though!

 

[immortals84]

Originally posted by Hakim
Mulitplayer option: two persons can play one civ cooperatively eg by having different roles in controlling the civ. Different GUIs would be required since some decisions can't be taken by someone having the other "role".

It wouldnt work out for me and my peers. That is why we have civil disputes.

 

[Vancouver 2010]

Highways.

Essentially, they'd be the same as railroads, but they'd be made available with either motorized transportation or an early modern age tech, and they'd only require rubber. That way, if you didn't manage to have coal and iron, you would still have one more peaceful opportunity to get a form of rapid movement before you'd have to fight for it. Also, railroads could be made to automatically change to highways at the same time.

This may have already been suggested. I just didn't want to take the time to read through all 23 pages to check if it had been or not.

 

[immortals84]

I always here proposals about civil wars, what about this:

-If a certain percentage of your cities revolt, have the AI take control of them for a duration depending on the power of those cities, then have it send units to attack your content cities. And not just two parties, how about up to 5 opposing parties. This will result in a five sided civil war to determine your new government. And if you lose, then your capitol city would change to one of your cities on the side of the victorious party. Every civ should ahve at least one civil war.

What happened to Barbarians taking control of captured cities like so in Civ2. I lost a city one time and had to fight the units it produced, that was cool.

Again if this exact idea was posted before, please forgive I have not read them all.

 

[Samurai Matt]

Here are some more of my ideas:

New Terrain:
Cliffs - More like rivers, passing around tiles rather than through them, a cliff would be placed on certain areas, mostly around hills and mountains that are on the coast. You can build cities there, but you can't build any naval units/improvements.
Canyons - These would take up whole tiles, and would be un-crossable until the discovery of engineering, and not safe until the discovery of steam power. They from from long rivers, and don't produce any kind of food, but, they often house metallic resources.
New Concepts:
Damage - At any time during bombardment, instead of simply destroying a city/worker improvement, it would get damaged first, having it's own little health bar. Workers and Engineers could repair the damage quickly (depending on how much damage there is). Also, wonders should be able to receive damage. In the game, wonders are virtually indestructable unless the entire city is destroyed, which is rather lame. Natural disasters (volcanos and earthquakes, most of the time), as well as nuclear bombardment, should be able to damage or even destroy certain wonders. I say "certain," because some wonders aren't really physical objects as much as they are concepts (Theory of Evolution, for example).
Timed Moods - Moods from other civs are effected by your gameply often, but sometimes they can be a bit stupid. Once, I declared war on Eygpt early on in the game. After a truce was signed (after I got me some horses, obviously), Cleo was furious with me for the rest of the game. I tried giving her gifts, but nothing worked. Hell, we signed an MPP, ROP, and a Military Alliance against Rome and she still never lightened up. In contrast, America and Japan were buddies only a few years after the A-Bombs were dropped. In civ4, the AI's mood toward you should gravitate slowly towards "Cautious" after a number of turns has gone by (unless your at war with that civ, of course).

 

[immortals84]

Originally posted by scorpamaniac
Hi I am an idiot and cant even post this in the right place but im desperate,
i have played civ3 for a while however when i play on the largest map wh I reload my saved games, the error some up
saying 'Data CITYl0 error' or something like that,
and the map comes up with no cities,
is there any remedy for that and can i retrieve my saved games?

Sorry, thanks for the help

Ask the moderator to move you to the technical supprt forum, but about your question, do you have the civ3 conquests 1.12 beta patch? If you do, then have you edited the text? If so, you are having the same problem i do! Something has been linked improperly. I cant even finish a damn game!

I would give 5 bucks to whoever can retreive my saved game file if its corrupt. Am i being to cheap?