What would we want/not want to return from cIV BTS?

[Deggial]

Wants: Just a view and nothing necessarily exactly as in Civ4.

- International trade, maybe in form of trading agreements (open borders and city connection - land or sea - necessary).
- Health would be nice (a local city mechanism, making city placement more important. Maybe with some trading options - national or international)
- Airports and *limited* airlifts


Don't wants:

- Vassals; not needed, as puppets are the new game mechanism that took their place. Vassals where nice in Civ4, but there was no negative effect associated with them, just positives (They gave additional happinesses *and* their resources. CiV Puppets are more interesting, in my view.
- Corporations; They were a possibility to use surplus resources. No need for them in CiV (Only iron gets obsolete and bonus resources have no quantity at present. Luxury resources can be traded.)
- Random events. Meh. I mostly ignored them.
- Map trading; I like the necessity to do the exploring myself. *Maybe*, if the map trading would just be limited to small maps, comparable to what gets revealed through ancient ruins.
- Colonies; I simply was annoyed by them and never used them.

Undecided:
- UN-Resolutions; Interesting in principle, but not so great in Civ4. Enforcing civics? Meh. Open borders where nice, but only banning nukes was a "must have". So, if the the CiV devs would continue their great job, they have done so far by introducing new concepts, they even could find interesting an useful resolutions for CiV. (e.g. trade sanctions against warmongers could be interesting.)

 

[Oohforf]

Want:

-The whole cottage - Village - town system (get rid of those ugly Trade things!)
-Stacks (I like the EU3 system,)
-War to be more...risky and dangerous much later in the game, to the point where you may be completely scared to go to war (today's society)
-Colonies, make them automatic (realistic)
-Map trading (played a part in history)

Don't want? Hard to explain.

 

[dexters]

A bit surprising to see Vassals get mentioned a lot. It was voted as one of the features people wanted to see back when I posed the question. Though the voting was a multiple choice format instead of an either/or format, so ranking choices wasn't possible, it may simply have been in a lot of people's lists, but near the bottom.

I do agree the BTS vassal system strangled diplomacy and reduced the number of possible interactions. Though I suspect most people want a more robust version of vassals if the system is ever to be implemented again.

 

[Buccaneer]

Apart from units, the only I really want from BtS is a variation of the conquest victory condition, in addition to the domination we have now.

I definitely do NOT want:

Espionage that is the default option (remember how klugy espionage was in BtS when it was optioned off?)

Vassals

Corporations

UN Resolutions (they were meaningless and irrelevant in single-player BtS)

Victory condition based on religion (just keep religion as a minor social policies-like bonuses)

and of course, no combat unit stackings of any kind

 

[dexters]

I'm pretty sure espionage will be default. But i wonder if you can sort of maybe ignore it.

The interviews talked about it being possible to ignore religion if you dont enjoy it. Not sure how that will given but I guess you can simply leave your religion to a basic pantheon of gods and not develop your own.

I suspect religion's benefits will be pretty mild, so espionage, which is replacing religion in the last third of the game will be of equal importance.

 

[AriochIV]

I don't know if vassals really counted as long-term friends. They were always hostile to me and generally resisted giving in to everything they could get away with. They are about as much long-term friends as a civ that was completely conquered and then you liberate them. They still hate you, but you get free open borders and they can't declare war on you.

In many games I often had a long-term friend (like Hatshepsut) who wasn't doing well and would voluntarily ask to become a vassal.

 

[vonbach]

Armies would be nice. A special exception to the "no stacking" rule.
Make it so you can join some units together and actually upgrade them.

 

[blackcatatonic]

I'd be very happy to see the following back:

- the ability to upgrade Scouts (Paratroopers being the most interesting final "destination" from current Civ 5 units, methinks). It annoys me to no end that levelling Scouts up is entirely pointless since the discovery of, say, Iron Working. There's very little reason to keep Scouts alive.

This. I really hate that the only way to not have to delete your Scout in the late game is by happening on one of those free upgrade ruins.

I gather that the CiV espionage model is excluding Spies as units - which is a shame, as some sort of spy unit would make a great upgrade for defunct Scouts.

Other things suggested in this thread which I would like to see back:

- Vassal states. This is how I'd like to see it: the Civ in question retains a substantial degree of autonomy, but is still subordinated to you. You wouldn't be able to control their cities, but you'd be able to view them, and you'd get things like automatic Open Borders, a percentage of their gold income, etc. A la feudalism, they would have to support you militarily, so this could either take the form of them giving you units when they become your vassal, or automatically declaring war on whoever you war with. Similarly, you'd have to promise to protect them, and supporting a vassal state would have a negative impact on your happiness. Subjecting a Civ to vassalage would get you a negative diplomacy marker similar to the warmongering penalty, and there would be an option for vassal states to seek foreign support to back their bid for independence (or maybe this could be integrated with espionage - you could get a spy to incite a nationalistic revolt against the oppressors). Or failing that, the ability to view a puppeted city without having to annex it would be nice

- Wildlife (bears, wolves, etc.) roaming around as an early game threat. They were fun! It would be nice to see them attacking Barbarians as well as Civ units

- Cottages, hamlets, villages and towns. Trading Posts are the new Road Spaghetti

- Map trading - although this would have a considerable impact on the game as it would potentially affect things like the bonus happiness for NW discovery, the gold for CS discovery, and the popular CS quest where they ask you to find X for them. Map-stealing as an espionage option might be a nice way around this problem

- More resources, especially Bonus and Strategic. It's purely a flavour-based request, but I'd really like to see more variety

- This isn't technically BTS, but it's been a part of the game until CiV: different music for every era. Oh, I miss this so much. The CiV soundtrack is great (really, REALLY great) and I love how each Civ has its own 'theme'. Unfortunately, when playing as that CiV you never get to hear the theme enough, and it moves too quickly to the general 'region-specific' soundtrack. There's something not right about listening to Dvořák in the Ancient era

- And please, for the sake of my sanity, make it possible to turn off the Scared Worker 'feature'. I don't want to have to keep telling my wuss of a mine-builder to keep digging every turn because there's a Barbarian Warrior 6 tiles away within range of my City and several Crossbowmen...

I definitely DON'T want to see:

- Corporations. They added nothing to the game. At all.

- Religion impacting on diplomacy IF it's going to result in Crazy Crusader Isabella. It should have some impact, but the whole 'I hate you because you're following a different religion' thing (while arguably realistic) was boring and predictable as hell

- The end of 1UPT - except for non-combat units, where I think it should be raised to 2 or even 3UPT so that more than one Worker can develop the same tile

I'm undecided on:

- Colonies. The idea was fun in principle, but it lacked something for me. This is inspired by a thread over in General Discussions, but I would like to see new 'rare' resources on foreign continents which could only be developed by colonisation. I'm not fussed by the Civ3 model of 'this tile is outside my territory, but I'm going to develop it anyway'. If it's next door to your territory, it's not really colonisation, is it?

- UN Resolutions. Can we still have these if we turn off Diplomatic Victory? If so, I'm in.

- Random events and global warming. If they're coming back, they need to be less random, more situational and with more player control to minimise the damage (active volcanoes - fertile soil so there's an incentive to settle the area, but there's a small chance they might erupt; if one of your cities gets some sort of plague, there should be a chance that it will spread to other cities, but you can shut down trade to decrease the risk; Buildings and Improvements to contain flooding, etc)

 

[vonbach]

Corporations. They added nothing to the game. At all.

Agreed. Please no corporations.

 

[Louis XXIV]

In many games I often had a long-term friend (like Hatshepsut) who wasn't doing well and would voluntarily ask to become a vassal.

Those could be voluntarily broken, though, no? Voluntary vassals (as opposed to capitulation) were very much analogous to City-States.

 

[WillBill]

A lot of good ideas here! Theres some good stuff that id like to see again:

- foreign trade routes (as an extra incentive to keep things peaceful)
- vassals
- random events
- Open Borders also being a economic +
- granting independence
- barbarian cities (although it could be camps becoming new CSs in this case)
- possibility to overtake cities with culture
- Ethnicities, with impact on happiness and revolts (ok, the latter was mod only). (GREAT IDEA)
-Being able to use mods in MP would make it for me since I only play MP. And there are some good mods out there. (GREAT IDEA TOO)

About Vassals, its a good way to end a war without being attacking 10 f turns latter. The Vassal State obviously hate your guts and do anything to get freedom back.

 

[apocalypse105]

I would like to see staying peacefull actually having a benefit other then going for a culture victory...

Like foreign trade routes ,
changing research agreements that if you are friends it will give tyou more but if not it will give you less

 

[Uberfrog]

I would really like to see ethnically diverse unit sets, for me it is certainly one of the most important cosmetic features.

I'm hoping such an announcement will be coming soon.

Yes. Even if BtS's unit sets were a little half-baked (only lasting the first couple of eras, and no African set), they were quite nice, and I was disappointed that they didn't do anything similar in vanilla Civ V.

I'd really like to see some diverse unit graphics in G&K, and if my wish comes true and they add a couple of sub-Saharan African civs (Ethiopia and Zulu, for instance), I'd love to see an African tileset and music suite added.

As far as other features go, I was not too enamoured with vassal states as implemented in the Civ IV expansions, nor corporations (even though they were an interesting idea on paper). I'd really like to see extended UN/Apostolic Palace options return in a meaningful way.

 

[MisterBoomBoom]

I would like to see:
+ Random Events...give me quests other than the rather underwhelming CS ones
+ Give me a more lengthy, more elaborate and thought out balanced Tech Tree that would allow me to start, stay or end in any period of my choosing
+ More resources and uses for such resources. Stone/Stone works a good step forward to better commerical depth in the game
+ More unique units with diverse improvable traits that can be sustained throughout a good portion of the game.
+ A proper Diplomatic/Peaceful path to victory other than through wealth
+ Granting/changing sovereignty of cities. Why not allow me to build up CS's or grant independance to colonies?
+ A more diverse barbarian population with their own abilities toward becoming civilizations
+ Adding rarer great people, with better abilities or events that can help tell a civilizations "story"
+ More diverse improvments and let workers destroy anything. Make worker more powerful/useful
+ When another civ offers/wants something...give me a chance to review the worlds diplomatic situation. Whose friendly with whom etc.
+ I like citadels and forts. But wish for more diverse and useful type defensive buildings/walls that can coexist and protect improvements.
+ I'm sorry but I loved the erupting volocanos and throne room. The Civ Revolution trophy room better than achievments IMHO.
+ More On/Off game options..always war, turn off Nukes and/or uranium or any resource resource for that matter.
+ Let my forests grow....animal units live once again and be able to be captured and zoo-ed /add a zoo improvemnt (hint hint)

What you can keep on the cutting room floor:
- Global Warming
- Corporations
- The game ending UN with the horrid resolution system
- Vasselsage can be replaced with some actual use of the "defense pact"
- Anymore UU ancient "warrior" units that are gone and useless with horses and iron.
- Research Agreements
- A "religious victory" of any kind
- NO RETURN TO THE STACK OF DOOM.
- Any sort of enviromental backlash to manufactural improvements.
- The rehashed leaders of previous games. How about someone new!?

 

[TimeWeaver]

Want: Random events, but if so they should be optional of course.
I also wish to have many of the great tunes in CiV as alternative tunes to the ones already in game, I've played the game so much that I could need some variety.

Do not want: stacks of doom, dreadfully boring micro management of single tiles

 

[MkLh]

- Corporations. They added nothing to the game. At all.

I'd say they didn't add much to the game. They were quite similar simple mechanism as City States on V - you give money and get stuff and that's it. Corporations were slightly more interesting and complex though as what they gave depended also on resources you had, not just money you paid.

 

[blackcatatonic]

+ Granting/changing sovereignty of cities. Why not allow me to build up CS's or grant independance to colonies?

Interesting idea, though I can see it being exploited by the AI (and potentially human players) when rushing a Diplomatic Victory.

 

[aluelkdf]

I'm not sure if these were specifically from BTS, but I know it is part of Civ 4. I want to see vassal states come back. This adds realism to gameplay, and this is what happens in real life. South korea is basically America's vassal state and North Korea is China's vassal state. In the cold war, cuba was a vassal state of the Soviet Union. Today, Syria is a vassal state of Iran. Israel is a vassal state of America (this is debatable, it might be the other way around). But regardless, my point is vassal states happen in real life so it should be in the game to.

Map trading should come back too. Its ridiculous that in 1800AD there may be undiscovered parts of the world with friendly civs nearby, but I can't trade or by a map from them. A map would be traded just like any other commodity in real life. Evenin the classical era civs should be able to trade maps.

I would also like to see tech trading, but I don't think this is as important as map trading.

 

[Buccaneer]

I guess I don't understand the desire for map trading. One of the greatest elements of Civ5 is exploration. Getting your scout(s) out, navigating the terrain, is not only crucial but fun as well. Same thing later with Caravels.

 

[AriochIV]

Those could be voluntarily broken, though, no? Voluntary vassals (as opposed to capitulation) were very much analogous to City-States.

They could be voluntarily broken, but this would generally only happen if the geopolitical situation changed, which is entirely appropriate. If you had and maintained a good relationship, this would rarely happen, and if it did, it was no big deal... the civ was still your friend. City-States are never your friends... they have to be continually bribed to remain your allies, and anyone who pays more can win their loyalty at any time... and if the AI's were smart, they could get them to declare war on you and instantly destroy all the influence you've built up.

As it is, having City-State bribed constantly away by someone else, having to bribe them back next turn, then having to ask everyone to make peace with the City-State who declared war on it... is a pretty tedious gameplay mechanic. It seems pretty clear that Firaxis realizes this, but I hope they're doing more to fix it than just adding more quests.