Updated Civ Suggestions

[sen803]

I recently played two full games of Civ and I do think that the developers did a nice job with NFP—it added many new layers to the game and found a way to make some content optional.

That said, since there seems to be notice that there may be additional content or balance patches coming to Civ6, I would like to post my thoughts on how the game could be further improved and polished. This is an update of my prior similar posts, and again I don’t claim that all of this is original—just my list of how I think Civ6 could be further improved.

New Content:

• I think one game play concept that would be marketable and could be worked into a DLC without necessarily needing an entire expansion is disease/health. I still find it very surprising that with the exception of sewer systems, there really is no inclusion of health or the healthcare system in Civ6 (especially with COVID-19 being one of the most significant world events of this century). I think there are three potential ways to incorporate healthcare into the game.
  • The simplest way would be to just include hospitals as either a building the neighborhood district or in the city center—perhaps giving some combination of food, housing, and/or amenities.
  • An intermediate way to add healthcare would be to have a medical district with an apothecary, hospital, and medical laboratory, as tier 1-3 buildings which have some combination of science, food, housing, and/or amenities.
  • The most detailed way would be to have not only a medical district, but also a health currency and disease mechanism which could be a game mode. There could be a health currency (think Civ4) which is related positively impacted by housing/resources/medical buildings and negatively impacted by to population size, being over the housing limit, CO2, recent disasters etc and would affect food/growth and happiness. It would be interesting to see disease essentially as a medical disaster and have it interface with the disaster system (more likely after floods/hurricanes) as well as be more likely if carbon emissions are high from gathering storm. Perhaps even aqueducts and Dams could provide health. I would also like to see pollution as a result of city growth and burning carbon that negatively impact health, which could be mitigated by green power.

• I think an alternate leader DLC would be marketable, bringing an additional leader for many of the original Civs—such as America, Arabia, Egypt, Germany, India, Japan, Rome, Russia, and Spain. This could be an opportunity to bring back some classic Civ rulers (Elizabeth, Bismark, Caesar, Lincoln, Isabella and Catherine to name a few), while also giving some other Civs new leaders. I would personally be most interested in alternate leaders for America, Egypt, India, Russia, and Spain.
• I also think that there is enough room for some additional wonders in the game, especially if there was a focus on Industrial, Modern, and Atomic wonders. However, I think that the ancient and classical wonders in Civ6 are saturated, and would only really want to see additional wonders at the earliest in the late middle ages. I think it would be interesting to see some type of great airport or train station, and I’ve always wanted to see the Florence Duomo in Civ. There are also some wonders from many iterations of the civ line (Notre Dame, Sistine Chapel, Globe theatre, some type of great Dam), that were not included in Civ 6. While I think that was intentional to bring new content into the series, it might be nice to bring a little of that more traditional content into a final DLC.
• While both the base game and the NFP did an excellent job with the great people, the game could use some additional great people. This is especially true for great scientists, great generals, and great merchants (with merchants mostly with the economic mode is enabled). I am often two eras ahead on great scientists and 1-2 eras ahead on the generals/merchants. Another great artist who generates sculpture before the atomic era would also be nice. Also given the Copernicus featured so prominently in multiple versions of Civ, I am surprised that he is not included as a great scientist.
• I think that there is room for some additional buildings in the neighborhood district (especially public schools and police stations, potentially hospitals) and in the city center (mass transit systems and recycling centers) which could be fairly easily incorporated into the existing artistic framework to make the late game a little more interesting. While there is somewhat of a balance between implied improvements and actual improvements, these are all buildings that were in prior iterations of civ. Adding hospitals and public schools could require an additional tech or two, which might help slow down that part of the later tech tree.
• From a gameplay perspective, it would be nice if there was a city-state that had an improvement on water tiles without a resource.

 

[sen803]

Balance Changes:

Railroads
Railroads are one of the least polished aspects of Civ6. Creating railroads tile by tile with military engineers is very tedious. It would be nice if there were a way to automatically tell a military engineer to create a railroad from one city to another city. Also the movement reduction and increase in gold for trade routes from railroads is too low, so I don’t really end up building many.

AI

• One of the tangible ways that could improve the AI is improving where they settle. I still find the AI focusing on optimizing loyalty, but not necessarily always setting closer to fresh water or new resources.
• Another way that the AI could be improved is if they use their great people more often. I still find that sometimes the AI has several great people which have not been used.
• I also find that the AI does not often build unique improvements for Civs. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the AI build a Pa or a Feitoria, to name a few.
• I think the AI war-efforts could be more coordinated.

World Congress

• I think the World Congress could use a buff. I think one way this could be achieved is if it moved to three proposals per cycle a little earlier.
• Emergencies are underpowered—I’ll go to war for a large sum of gold or another significant reward, but not for 100 diplomatic favor. This is particularly true in the late game.
• I also think that the Competition bonuses weak. I have little incentive to allocate the production of cities to these projects, and I just passively accrue the points from great people etc, since the projects are not really a game changer. This is particularly true for the World’s Fair and the World Games.

Civs

• I think that the Eagle Warrior should be a replacement for the Swordsman rather than the Warrior.
• Portugal has one flaw regarding city-states—they can only send routes by water but many land based city-states have quests for a trade route, which Portugal cannot satisfy.

Wonders

• I think Machu Picchu should be a late Middle Ages era wonder, similar to the other Mesoamerican wonders—perhaps coming with Guilds?
• I think that the Statue of Zeus should have some great general points.
• I think St. Basil’s Cathedral should have some type of tundra requirement—I too often see the AI building in a city without any tundra.

Improvements

• I think that the pasture remains a bit underpowered and might benefit from an additional food or production either in the Classical or Middle Ages.
• I do think that the city park should have additional Amenities or another buff; it’s an improvement that is in most cities, but I rarely build.

Districts

• Neighborhoods—if you have multiple neighborhoods in a city, it would be nice if you could build a different building (food market, shopping mall) in each neighborhood.
• I think the hydroelectric plant should provide similar benefits as plants in the industrial zone (some small amount of additional production as well as Great Engineer points, potentially also get a benefit from 6 envoys to an industrial city-state).
• I think the cultural output (3) of Ferris Wheels is quite generous—I would reduce it to 1 or 2.
• I think industrial zones would benefit from adjacency bonuses from green power plants (solar, wind, geothermal).
• I rarely build more than two aerodomes, but given that every major city has an airport, I think the yields in this district should be increased to promote having players actually build it. I think it would be nice to have an international airport as a third building in the district (and could just upgrade the current airport since the district doesn’t really have room artistically for another building), which provides additional trade routes and increases tourism. It would also be nice if the international airport adds food to a city. I also think that areodomes should be impacted by commercial city-states and get the same benefits as harbors and commercial hubs.

City States

• One feature that I miss from Civ5 is the ability to gift units to city-states. I do think that has its limited uses, particularly when a Civ ally attacks a city-state that you are also Suzerain of, and can’t go to war with that Civ.
• I also think it would be useful if the city states would be more aggressive with razing AI cities, and if the AI city-state military units were a little more coordinated. I’ve seen the AI city-state units (of a CS that I’m a Suzerain of) tend to wander almost randomly and have units right outside an AI civ city that I’ve completely bombarded to no defense, but the city-state units only sometimes actually attack the city.

Great People

• I think Magellan the great person should just increase movement for all naval units by 1 point. I typically have all of the naval luxuries, so I don’t find that bonus to be particularly useful.
• I think Leonardo provides a little too much culture to workshops—especially when you have the Mausoleum.

Natural Disasters

• I have noticed that some disasters, particularly droughts, floods, hurricanes still tend to recur in the same location.
• I think that tornadoes are a bit overpowered—it might make sense to just have Tornados last a single turn and then disappear.

Miscellaneous

• It would be nice when culture bombing an adjacent civilization to get the option of using the culture bomb or not. Sometimes there are great locations for a specific district, but you don’t necessarily want the diplomatic ramifications of culture bombing an adjacent civilization.
• I think some of the techs from later in the game—especially in the Renaissance, Industrial and Modern eras should be a bit more expensive.
• Some artifacts still arise from the wrong era. I’ve seen artifacts from the Industrial era of a civ—which got conquered in the Classical era.
• I think military units should also be able to steal great works (both relics and works of art) when pillaging a tile.
• There are two improvements from Civ3 which I actually think would be nice to reintroduce into Civ6. One is the outpost, which I think could be useful for visualizing key areas. The other is a trading post, for claiming a resource that is not in your territory.
• It would be nice if the resources tab included some information on the industries and corporations that you have. It has been mentioned before that the industries and corporations mode seems to limit the AI improving resources before economics.

 

[sen803]

Suggestions for Civ7 Refocusing:

• I personally think that the developers should find a way to include Italy into the base game of Civ7.
• I think that the best scenarios in Civ were in Civ3 Conquests—especially the Middle Ages and the WWII scenarios—but really all of those scenarios were well done. I think the more recent versions of Civ the scenarios have been largely somewhat more obscure historical scenarios, and are not surprisingly less popular. However, I think that a nicely designed set of scenarios covering world history would be interesting to add into Civ7, especially since Civ3 Conquests will be 20 years old soon.
• I am among those who enjoys the more historically accurate parts of Civ, and so I am less of a fan of the Giant Death Robot. I think it would be worth considering making the Giant Death Robot an optional mode in Civ7.
• I have a bit of a problem with the embarkation being so easy in Civ 6. I think that the Civ3 version of requiring transport ships to allow land units to travel on the sea is more realistic—it seems a bit odd when swordsmen just embark and start traveling on the coast. Although this basic concept is not going to change in Civ 6, I do think it should be rethought for Civ7. Also I think builders should only be able to embark within the borders of your civ, and settlers/religious units should require transport in a ship.
• I think the dichotomization of museums into art and archeology museums is a bit arbitrary and could be reassessed in Civ7.
• I also think it would be interesting to have the ability to move portable/plantable resources around the map. Humans have moved resources around the world quite a bit, from to the introduction of horses by Europeans to the Americas to the global movement of coffee production etc. I think once you have certain resources that are improved, for example cattle, then you could have the option to produce or buy a rancher, which you could then use to transport cattle to another location and try to introduce cattle onto a tile elsewhere that doesn’t currently have a resource on it. The moving resources would have a certain failure rate, including if you try to move it onto a tile where there’s a currently unrevealed resource. Similar options could be there for wheat, horses, bananas, coffee, cotton, so that if one are of the map is empty but relatively resource scarce, you have the opportunity to try to buff that location up a bit with some bonus or luxury resources.

 

[Geatshead98]

I just want to see Cumbria in Civilization 7. That would be amazing.