What should they do for Civ 4

[Sirp]

I think it would be great if effort went into making each civilization 'feel' different through (sometimes subtle) differences between appearance of units, cities, and even the game interface. However notice that this concept is a tradeoff against having lots and lots of civilizations. The more civilizations you have, the more they all start to 'feel' sameish.

It'd be great if they could remove this Golden Age nonsense, and resist the temptation to make warfare any more feature-filled or complicated, instead concentrating on the currently underdone portions of the game, like diplomacy/politics, espionage, maritime development, trade and commerce etc etc.

-Sirp.

 

[dguichar]

...another very long thread about Civ4 and its features.

If we're going to start another one, then please i beg you all try to not talk about "realism" but "deeper modelling".

What i would like will be:

1st. Flexible evolution.
The egyptians became religious and industrious because of the environment they started at. The food was provided by Nile's flood, so the priests were very important on predicting the ocurrence of that event. Also as the time to prepare the farms was so short they were forced to work harder and faster or fall to starvation by missing the flood.
Any chances on providing a similar starting environment for each civ?

2nd. Dark future.
I almost never build old armies... why do so? I'll be able to build tanks some time in the future. So i'll wait. Research should be on global terms, rather than in specific technologies.

3rd. City growth separated from feeding people.
Just like in Master of Magic. And let the soldiers eat, be trained and NOT built.

4th. Specialization of labor.
Just like in Colonization. It won't be enough to have an aqueduct to let your hamlet grow into a village, but an minimum number of stone cutters and lumberjacks.

That's all

Keep civilized

David

 

[mazzz]

ONE:WHEN YOU TAKE A CITY CHOOSE BETWEEN, TAKING,RAZING,GIVING TO AN OTHER CIV, LIBERATING IF CONTAINS A CIV WHO WAS FULLY COQURIED, OR CREATING A INDEPEDTED NATION
TWO:SET ALLINCES IN EDITOR!

 

[Sirp]

THREE:MAKE ALL IN GAME TEXT IN ALL-CAPITALS!

 

[Algernon Pondlife]

dguichar:

If we're going to start another one, then please i beg you all try to not talk about "realism" but "deeper modelling".

Yes!

The phrase I had in mind was "historically valid" as distinct from "historically accurate". Civ models the kind of ways that society evolved rather than tracking the actual events.

 

[Roadrunna]

Building a colony should either have its own cultural borders, or have a payment necessary from a civ who builds cities near it as a territory purchase.
Currently, i'd rather have a city in place to hold a resource, even if it is higher maintenance as it is a more secure settlement.

Also, i'm not sure whether colonies can actually function inland on another continent and still provide u with a resource, but I would like a harbour type tile improvement which connected to the colony with a road would make it clearer to me that the colony is in connection with your mainland.

 

[Dark Yoda]

algernon pondlife: the game is not too hard (i play on warlord, rubbish compared to the civ-kings who inhabit these here forums, lol), it was merely a thought that if the split-off nation was part of the old nation, they could have military positions and so forth and could provide assistance during conflict. It's generally easier if u have more than one nation fighting an enemy as it serves your purposes if ur trying for conquest victory to have one civ dead and another with a weakened army.

mazzz: those are brilliant ideas that would be easy to add and would add another level to the gameplay.

dguichar: it's an interesting concept with the unit training but wouldn't it just be the same as building in the game? i suppose you could look at it that way but what if you look at the time it takes to "construct" the units as training time. i'm sure i read somewhere that civ3 can be modded to make the soldiers supported by food like the settlers in civ2.

sirp: i like the idea of individuality to the civs and would look better. i disagree with the GA removal though, look on it as the renaissance for civ.

right, onto my ideas then, . it's been said in many threads but i'm going to say it again. 2050AD is too early for a mandatory retirement. also, i think that unit choice is far too limited. where are ground transports and there should be a unit between infantry and mech infantry. where are the modern foot infantry? camoflaged troops would look nice and could have (slightly) enhanced abilitys in their respective terrain, eg: desert troops could move faster in desert. also some futuristic units would be nice, like in civ2: TOT in the Extended version of the normal game.

 

[dguichar]

Originally posted by Dark Yoda
dguichar: it's an interesting concept with the unit training but wouldn't it just be the same as building in the game? i suppose you could look at it that way but what if you look at the time it takes to "construct" the units as training time. i'm sure i read somewhere that civ3 can be modded to make the soldiers supported by food like the settlers in civ2.

Originally posted by Dark Yoda
it's an interesting concept with the unit training but wouldn't it just be the same as building in the game? i suppose you could look at it that way but what if you look at the time it takes to "construct" the units as training time. i'm sure i read somewhere that civ3 can be modded to make the soldiers supported by food like the settlers in civ2.

No, it wouldn't be the same. You'll have two boxes in the city screen: one for training and one for building. The training box will provide you with specialists, one of which is a soldier (just like in Colonization) and the building box will provide you with city improvements or soldier's weapons or armor, depending on era.

Where will that food come from? There's no "food" treasury... Will it be deducted from the city which built it? Nothing is clear to me. I was talking about making food production and city growth separated. You'll require a minimum food production to sustain your whole empire (not individualy for each city, just like gold it's shared now through the empire to pay the costs) but the rate of growth will be based upon the number of people currently in the city versus the available space to growth. When there's no more space to growth the people will stop growing, unless you discover the appropiate technology and fulfill the specialists requirements to allow your city to grow further.

Keep civilized

David

 

[Buckets]

Great ideas here.

My personal wish for civ4 is a more flexible government system where your economic/political stance is determined by a slider similar to the science slider. One slider might be for socialism/capitalism and one for dictatorship/elections with varying degrees inbetween the extremes. One side might give more shields, the other more gold, for example. Moving it around too much might cause revolution/anarchy.

 

[Dark Yoda]

sorry, i misunderstand a lot but now i get it . i'm not sure about the food either. someone was wondering how to simulate a stalingrad type siege and someone else told them it was possible so i'm assuming it would be from the home city, or maybe it was for the units within that city, but the first scenario does cause problems as u say. anyway, buckets that is a great idea and would work well. how about alien landings or am i taking this too far?

 

[Algernon Pondlife]

someone was wondering how to simulate a stalingrad type siege

But a Stalingrad type seige would only last one turn.

 

[Greyhawk1]

New diplomatic option: Asylum Granted.

This assumes civs civilian population will start to migrate to the least offensive Civ nearby. With a Guaranteed Asylum deal the disaffected populace will flood to you.

New Modern Wonder: Freedom Space Station. Doubles research in all cities with Research Labs.

New Modern Wonder: Space Shuttle. Reveals all tiles, can scout any tile on the map in 1 turn.

New Modern Wonder: AWACS. All ground units gain +whatever to attack/def.

New Modern Wonder: The Human Genome Project. No disease from Floodplains or Jungle. +3 Happy Faces per city on that continent. +50% research for that city.

New Modern Wonder: Electronic Library. The Great Library for modern ages - uses CDROM as well as online resources and data mining to access Info. Any tech known by two other civs are automatically added to your techs as well as all other civs.

New Modern Wonder: CERN high energy physics installation. Needs a 2 tile radius around a city to be controlled by the civ building the wonder. Adds +50% research for building city but also adds +50% for any city that has a tile shared with the CERN building city.

New Modern Wonder: Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Halves production time for any Space Ship Part.

New Modern Wonder: Hubble Space Telescope. +50% Culture and +50% Research for city.

New Tech: Cosmology. Allows Hubble Space Telescope wonder.

Jeez, I could go on forever here...

 

[MOAB]

THe battles should be more realistic. I hate it when the spearman takes life away from a tank. This also forces people to upgrade and lose old units.

Also the AI needs to be smarter. I try to give them all my cities and they don't want them. If i was them, i would take them all

 

[YNCS]

Originally posted by Greyhawk1
New Modern Wonder: Space Shuttle. Reveals all tiles, can scout any tile on the map in 1 turn.

There should be something that reveals the entire map. I still don't understand why Apollo Project doesn't (it did in Civ 2).

 

[Phantom Lord]

I'd like to see more UN / diplomatic functions, like stopping wars, deciding about global trade embargos and so on. These should not be tied to one nation that built the UN.

UUs for every age could be better than those we have - who needs a F15? On the other hand we'd lose individual characteristics of nations.

A custom nation functon would be fun (chose two traits and your UU), MOO 2-style.

Alpha Centauri type unit design would be fun, research techs and get unit improvements, or other abilities. Some naval and worker related techs already work like this.

Enemy nations should be able to surrender completely and have the ability to separate from your empire if treated badly - like in Civ 1.

 

[Hygro]

Well, I think civ4 should not be a heavily modded civ3 or a theoretical expansion. I say make it fundamentally differant.

A lot of suggestions are something you could mod, are could almost mod (thought not quite )

 

[DiamondzAndGunz]

Originally posted by Hygro
Well, I think civ4 should not be a heavily modded civ3 or a theoretical expansion. I say make it fundamentally differant.

A lot of suggestions are something you could mod, are could almost mod (thought not quite )

Yeah, really. Looking at a lot of these suggestions, more than half of them you could just mod into the game- adding UU's for each era, adding new techs/wonders, etc. Almost all the rest you can almost-mod, such as adding wonders that make an effect not yet available in the game. What I would like to see, for example, is expanded diplomacy and trade functions, or perhaps even an addition of religion into the game. Now, those would be some things that can't be modded into the game. That, I think, is the type of suggestions we need.

 

[Algernon Pondlife]

Well, I think civ4 should not be a heavily modded civ3 or a theoretical expansion. I say make it fundamentally differant.

Bravo Hygro and DiamondzAndGunz

Algae

 

[Ancient Pike]

1. Non-Agression Pacts! I hate having to sign a MA with another civ to get some reassurance they won't bs me.

2. The ability to encourage peace between two other warring civs.

 

[bike]

I would prefer SMAC II above CIV IV actually. I suggest take the resources & culture to SMAC. The things about SMAC that I miss in CIV are harder to implement the other way around since they make less sense on earth. (Formers can do anything up to lower/raise terrain; Special map regions like the Monsoon forrest; Water towns/improvement; Leader of the world; something I miss less but was nice also is free unit-creation)

What would make sense is that forrest can grow automatically, but forrests made more sense in SMAC then in CIV. In CIV you only want them on tundra's, where on SMAC you could have them everywhere with Tree Farm/Hybrid forrest in town.

And something else, it would be fine if they improved the micromanagment skills of the city-govener. Like, not going for +6 food when there is no aquaduct.