Two things that I hope Civ 7 will fix

[ShadowWarrior]

Civ style games (including Millennium) have been evolving toward the tendency to litter the map with objects. This trend began back in Civ 5 when 1upt was introduced, which made carpet of doom an inevitability. Civ 6 kept 1upt, and exacerbated the littering problem when wonders and districts were placed on hex inside the city radius. This disposition was perpetuated in similar games like Millennium. Toward the middle to late stage of the game, the map is clogged.

I don't know if I am in the minority or not, but if this is an issue with a lot of players, then I like to ask the developers to consider a different mechanic that reduces map clogging. The first solution is to simply remove 1upt. For other reasons that have been well expounded on in this forum, 1upt is a nightmare not just because it is visually tedius, but also because carpet of doom makes manuevering units around the globe almost impossible.

Another change that would reduce the clogging problem is to simply dislink wonders from any individual hex. That would leave districts tied to the hex, but with 1upt gone and wonders severed from the hex, the districts themselves should not be a significant clogging burden.

 

[GeneralZIft]

There's already another thread on Stacks Vs Carpets.

My thought is this: if they're keeping 1UPT, they could introduce a system that allows you to move multiple units at once, like an RTS. Do like a Box and you can queue like 10 ships to cross an ocean.

It would probably solve everyone's issues

 

[UWHabs]

I see a sort of weird imbalance between clogging the map, but also having the map and terrain as arguably a limiting factor. Like, yes, wonders do take up space on the map. But at the same time, that adds an extra level of decision for them. There's definitely times where I consider whether to build a wonder, but then the space it takes makes me decide against it.

But the problem is that the scale of civ is skewed. Like in a standard game, the entirety of France is more or less a standard city radius. So when you end up slapping districts and wonders on every tile, it can definitely make the game feel very crowded. You can run out of space for farms, never mind keeping any areas "natural". I'd love to be able to actually be able to like build a "city park" like Central Park that actually shows up on the map and takes space, but sort of fits into the space around it. Or actually have lands nearby to cities that are actually undeveloped and still raw forests even into the modern era.

 

[civviefan]

I agree, map from mid game onwards needs de-clogging. Religious unit spamming adds to the cacophony.

What if 1UPT remained but there was a cap on how many units a Civ could have at any one time. Existing Units could be re-trained or beefed up by civs with military emphasis, therefore offering a warmonger civ an outlet for this focus which wouldn’t result in more items on the map.

 

[pokiehl]

I'm not sure how wonders are clogging up the map. They don't impede movement. I really like the fact that wonders are on their own tiles now.

 

[GeneralZIft]

Ah actually a thought I had just now: city view but with the whole city. So like including the surrounding tiles.

Edit: sorry not related but I was thinking of how you could have wonders on their own tile and a city view at the same time

 

[Wizard-Bob]

To me, Civ IV looked a lot more "clogged" with railroads on virtually the entire map. Civ VI is a beauty to look at and enjoy. I would love for the Civ VI style to be continued, maybe adding elevations

 

[Leucarum]

Humankind was the worst offender here for me. Not only were there far more districts etc... built on the map but they did not look especially distinct from one another.

Civ6's very stylised/cartoonish graphics did help keep things looking more distinctive. I think the more realism they aim for in 7's art style, the less districts we should be building onto the map.

 

[Josephias]

In an opposite way, I'd lean to tell civ VI "disctintive improvements" design contributed to the map feeling clogged... everything looking so big is good for identification, but bad when you start putting too much things in the same area.

I'd wish there was a feature that allowed dynamic change on buildings size, in example: this way, you could have farms, and mines, windmills, factories and universities that looked very tiny in a bird's view of the map (as they should be, for realism), but then could grow to a civ-6 style when looking for an specific feature (E.g: you could select a city and have all its districts and improvements "grow", change to a "resources" layer and see all pastures, plantations and special mines and quarries in a bigger size, select a religious unit and then the temples/holy sites would stand out in big format... etc.)

 

[Lord Lakely]

There are ways to increase the space on the map without necessarily needing to create more tiles per map. You can for instance use the edges of the tiles for roads and movement. You can layer tile improvements so multiple tile improvements can be placed on top of each other (for instance: a road, farm and castle). You can assign multiple resources to the same tile so your choice is which resource you're going to cultivate: are you going for grapes so you have win, wheat so you can feed your population, or are you going to build a work camp to additional manual labour?

Regardless of how Civ 7 is going to tackle space, it's out of our hands now. The game is in full development, and fingers crossed it'll be good.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

Under the heading of "Two things I hope Civ7 will fix about the map"

Trading City tiles I could be something simple as you can always buy third (or more) ring tiles. Perhaps there is an increasing cost each time a tile is purchased, while you also have to purchase anything built on the tile.

Allow Map generation scripts to take Civ preferences into account. One civ could prefer Pangea and another islands so you get a 50/50 mix. This would be a new option and I'd keep the current map types so you could still play on all Pangea if you wish.

 

[Kaan Boztepe]

for me the worst offender is army unit numbers that is allowed in civ , reduce the number of units due to cost/upkeep etc and the problem fixes itself

 

[ColtSeavers]

Gameplay Wise: The Government System needs an overhaul, please no more infinite policy card switching, but regular governments/ ideologies like we had in the previous titels.
Graphic Style: Please more "mature" leader Portraits!

 

[Canadian Bluebeer]

Replace the gawdsawful World Congress we have in 6. In 5, you could make the suggestions, see what others suggested, then at least TRY to use some diplomacy to influence the outcome. In 6, random stuff just pops up, and you have ZERO clue what other civs want, and ZERO ability to influence their decisions.

(short of using firetuner to give yourself 150k diplomatic favor to pick whatever you want)

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Gameplay Wise: The Government System needs an overhaul, please no more infinite policy card switching, but regular governments/ ideologies like we had in the previous titles.

I like the policy card system but agree there needs to more of a long term effect of your choices somehow.

 

[UWHabs]

I like the policy card system but agree there needs to more of a long term effect of your choices somehow.

Even if policy cards were locked in place for an amount of turns, that would at least get rid of cheesing one turn cheap upgrades. Or once you cycle out a policy card, it was unavailable for a set amount of time before you could add it back. Or, if you don't want the stick, give me the carrot - like in the early versions of the game where you got a gradually increasing bonus if you stayed in a government, You could have each policy card with 2 or more levels. So you get 1 bonus builder charge when you slot in the card, and if it stays in for 20 turns, then it turns into 2 bonus builder charges. If you swap it out and back the counter resets.

Alternately you could even have each policy card act more like the governments do, where you have some anarchy if you try to put a card back in you had before. Or you only get the free policy switches when you get a new government, not every culture tree discovery. If it costs you 500 gold to swap out policy cards in the mid-game, that's at least some discouragement.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Even if policy cards were locked in place for an amount of turns, that would at least get rid of cheesing one turn cheap upgrades. Or once you cycle out a policy card, it was unavailable for a set amount of time before you could add it back. Or, if you don't want the stick, give me the carrot - like in the early versions of the game where you got a gradually increasing bonus if you stayed in a government, You could have each policy card with 2 or more levels. So you get 1 bonus builder charge when you slot in the card, and if it stays in for 20 turns, then it turns into 2 bonus builder charges. If you swap it out and back the counter resets.

Alternately you could even have each policy card act more like the governments do, where you have some anarchy if you try to put a card back in you had before. Or you only get the free policy switches when you get a new government, not every culture tree discovery. If it costs you 500 gold to swap out policy cards in the mid-game, that's at least some discouragement.

Yes, something like this could work, should be manageable for the AI, and offer reasonable game play options:
- Policy cards get better over time, i.e. era 1 policies are inferior to era 3 policies
- The frequency with which you can replace policy cards is limited, i.e. you can't swap in a new policy card every time you unlock one. Possibly you get one change every X turns, possibly certain nodes of the civics tree let you make a policy swap. EDIT: or possibly the first civic you unlock for each era lets you replace 1 old policy, but no other old policies can be replaced except after a revolution.
- "Revolutions" allow you to swap policy cards freely as well as your government-type, but the more policy cards you swap, the longer the negative impact of the revolution lasts.

 

[ColtSeavers]

Yes, something like this could work, should be manageable for the AI, and offer reasonable game play options:
- Policy cards get better over time, i.e. era 1 policies are inferior to era 3 policies
- The frequency with which you can replace policy cards is limited, i.e. you can't swap in a new policy card every time you unlock one. Possibly you get one change every X turns, possibly certain nodes of the civics tree let you make a policy swap. EDIT: or possibly the first civic you unlock for each era lets you replace 1 old policy, but no other old policies can be replaced except after a revolution.
- "Revolutions" allow you to swap policy cards freely as well as your government-type, but the more policy cards you swap, the longer the negative impact of the revolution lasts.

From my point of view, the policy cards are just very generic. +50 % production increase for unit x, -100 % cost for buliding y... etc, that feels more like a board game, than a real simulation to me. I loved the CIV 5 policy trees, the Civ 4 System (which was more flexible) would also be fine with me. Checking the policy cards every turn for some peculiar benefit, I find very tiresome and superflous.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

I like the policy card system but agree there needs to more of a long term effect of your choices somehow.

In Civ 6 I think there was a "design decision" to allow players to give the as much freedom as possible to do what they want. Having the policies you use/run effect your civ long term would be one way to change that.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

From my point of view, the policy cards are just very generic. +50 % production increase for unit x, -100 % cost for buliding y... etc, that feels more like a board game, than a real simulation to me. I loved the CIV 5 policy trees, the Civ 4 System (which was more flexible) would also be fine with me. Checking the policy cards every turn for some peculiar benefit, I find very tiresome and superflous.

Ideally, the new iteration of policies will be a little less specific and more flavourful and evocative of the type of society you lead. Linking effects might be one way to do this. Seafaring, for example, might reduce the maintenance cost of naval units and boost trade yields from ocean-going trade. Mercantile might increase the gold yield from markets and lower the cost of hiring mercenaries. Monastic could improve resistance to foreign religious pressure and improve stability/happiness.

Having negative consequences associated with a policy is likely still an anathema to the current dev team, but linking multiple related effects could help break the feeling that policy cards exist solely to give you a 15% discount on artillery when you feel the need to build artillery. Especially if limited swapability means the policy cards stay in place for long periods and encourage you to specialize your empire.