What game mechanics lacks in CIV 4?

[NikG]

The title explains this thread.

However please keep anything like needed buildings, units, religions, civics, civilizations etc. out of this thread.

However the mechanics behind these can be discussed: ie. how units fight, more attributes to building, new or more advanced attributes for civics (like a xenofobia flag, which will slowy kill foreign population in your cities, ala what fascism did in CIV 3, etc.).

But PLEASE NO "I need the alien xjsdt484jt kl civilization from the star trek series" or whatever. And art should additional be keept out. Just game mechanics! Please I beg you!

 

[sarcastinator]

I want real combined-arms unit stacks back. Unlike Civ 3 though, I don't want to spend 3/4 of the game waiting for it to randomly spit out a Great Leader so I can finally build them. Stacks should have a strictly limited size, but bigger than 3. Maybe have the maximum size and maximum number of Armies in the field improve with technology.

 

[woodelf]

I know it has been discussed before, but a way to have a change in Leaders throughout the game, either through voting, death, upheavel, something. Over the course of the entire game having a creative/industrious (or whatever) Leader may not be to your civ's best interest.

Whether this would be done through random pop-up choices or a Civic column so people could chose is beyond me.

 

[sarcastinator]

Okay, here's a really radical related idea I had way before Civ 4 even came out.

You're civ has a pool of randomly generated leaders that can be assigned to jobs in the empire, giving various bonuses and invoking various costs and penalties. When I first thought of the idea, I was thinking along the lines of the system governors in MoO 2. You could put them in charge of cities, granting them different perks and influencing how the city governor AI behaves. In a succession-type game like above, you could chose your civ's rulers from the same pool.

 

[Padmewan]

Actually what you're suggesting sarcastinator is how it works in Medieval: Total War. The governors in that game, which is accurate for the era of feudalism (?), were both bureaucrats and military leaders. Some were quite good at running economies; others inspired fear and kept the province in line. The King himself was both a fighting unit and the uber-governor and meta-influenced other governors.

One starting-point for this would be to reintroduce from C3C "Kings," either for regicide-game purposes or for what you suggest. For example, a Monarchy civic could activate a King; an Economics civic could activate, Federal Reserve Board members? These could then function like mobile Forbidden Cities.

Upon reflection, would this really be different than existing Great People?

 

[sarcastinator]

As long as we're adding the potential for political mayhem, here's an idea; 'democratic' civics should mean something. The freer you let your people be, the more they will do on their own and the harder it will be to force your own way on them. Am I the only one who thought it was odd that I could give my people universal sufferage and still be their undisputed tyrant?

Here's a really radical idea; once you enact the most-democratic government civic available, 'the people' will be able to change the other civic options on their own. Hows that for making trouble?


Now for something completely different. I think I mentioned something about reworking unrest and revolt in the caffeine-induced psychotic babble I posted last night. Well here's the basic idea. Step one, improve and expand the happiness/unhappiness model. With the new and improved model, severe unhappiness will cause unrest (but not the total shutdown of previous civ games), and severe uncontrolable unrest can lead to revolt.

Revolt and civil war can also happen at other times. Severe shocks to a civ should have a chance to cause it - I don't know how to implement this, but please don't just resort to the 'capture the capital' thing. As an extra masochistic option, changing civics can also carry the potential for violence.

 

[Jouda]

You're my man, sarcastinator It seems we are on the same[SIZE=-1] wavelength.

There's no difference between despotism and democracy [/SIZE][SIZE=-1]in the way you lead the country[/SIZE][SIZE=-1], which is a bit strange. But this would require tons of changes in almost all aspect of the game (happines system in the first place).
[/SIZE]

 

[Padmewan]

I would suggest that "Civilization" is, well, a game about civilizations, not governments. The leader of your civ should really be thought of more as a spiritual guide (in the non-religious sense) rather than a person who lives for 6,000 years (!).

Of course, if you accept my claim that there is such a thing as a definable "civilization," you'd open a whole new can of worms. If you were to model the world today in Civ, would you make all of the Middle East one "civilization" comprising many individual nations? Would you make all of Europe on "civilization" or many? What would count as a "barbarian" civ?

OTOH a lot of the mechanics of Civ presume nationhood... the game's essential problem is that the actual "rules of the game" evolved dramatically between 4000 BC and today. To model these rules accurately would take huge changes of game engine between eras and, well, ruin the game.