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

[aluelkdf]

I actually want a vouluntary vassal to have the ability to break away. They may have become a vassal in the past because they didn't really have a choice. But as time goes on they may get very powerful, and at some point announce to the world that they are 100% sovereign and a full fleged civ. The vassal basically tells the civ that "owns" them, "take it for what it is. If you don't like it invade us." This is realistic. A vassal that becomes powerful will not want to remain a vassal forever.

And its something to think about and plan for. If a civ becomes your vassal you can't count on it forever. One day they may become your enemy and maybe even make you their vassal.

 

[Gucumatz]

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.

I completely agree.

Exploration is always fun. Not only would map trading ruin aspects of the game on singleplayer, on Multiplayer it could become simply terrible again. Being able to trade a map on multi to an enemy of your enemy so they can see their cities clearly to plan an attack or see where specific wonders are (especially the Fountain of Youth which is worth fighting over often in multiplayer).

Being able to trade your map to someone and "discover" the whole world in 1-3 turns is just silly (beyond satellites of course) and makes for a boring feature.

 

[aluelkdf]

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.

I agree with you for the early game. In the early game exploring is part of the fun. Even When you discover astronomy and start exploring with caravels it's fun. But often there are still undiscovered areas way late in the game. By this point, I feel that exploring is more of a chore than anything else.

Also, it's realistic to trade maps. The whole world was mapped out by 1800, long before satellites. And I guarantee that the English didn't explore every square mile of the Earth. The French didn't explore every square mile of the Earth. Neither did the Spanish, Americans or anybody else. All the empires explored large areas, some areas overlapping with areas that others explored too. But nobody explored everything. They basically put all their information together to figure out what was located at every square mile of the Earth. And this is what map trading simulates.

To get around the concerns of ruining the exploring aspect of the game, maybe map trading should only be allowed once you get to the industrial era. This leaves plenty of time for exploring. Maybe map trading can be a feature that you can turn on or off, like barbarians.

 

[Buccaneer]

Sure, but 'every square mile of the Earth' is a very different scale than the limited number of hexes in a Civ5 game.

 

[thadian]

WANT:

+ granting independence to cities of MY CHOICE, them becoming city states (i choose type).

+ Barbarian city states! I want this city state to be a rehashed mil city state that creates, and used units with hidden nationality. this city state can attack anyone, and maybe being its ally will make barbarians less likely to attack you/spawn near you or something.

+ map trading: I really want this back, but you shouldn't be able to give someone elses maps too, only your own discovered maps. so if you trade maps with alex, and then with monty - monty would NOT get alexes maps.

+ vassal states: I would like city states to be capable of becoming a real civ. if a city state builds a wonder or conquers 2 cities or something, they should "become england" for example.

+ Advance starts. I don't care if you didn't like it, turn it off and don't use it, do not deprive me of my pleasure.

+ lasting friendships - diplomacy where you can really count on long-term alliances BUT you have to be able to break them, in RL if my vassal was about to beat me to alpha centuari we wont be allies for very long...

+ colonizing: i liked being able to liberate cities and i don't care if it becomes a city state, vassal or real civ, i would be happy just to be able to liberate.

- espionage insanity: Normalize espionage by not letting spies sack a city def to 0, let spies level up and gain exp and promotions to become better spies, and make some spy missions cost more points or have a cooldown espionage so if you use a spy ability, then either that ability can't be used for X turns - or only X espionage actions per turn, just something easy and painless to make espionage feel like a natural part of the game.

 

[dexters]

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.

There's a middle ground I believe. The problem with the old system of map trading is that because map knowledge is cumulative, the map fills out quickly and a human player can conceivably sit at home, make 1 map trade and see the whole world.

The problem with Civ5 is that the game feels too claustrophobic and the low production in the early game is compounded by the absolute need to build ships and scouting units to meet all the city states and scout interesting locations. It's a double whammy of sorts to go from the very relaxed exploration in previous Civ games to the rigid need to explore, coupled with the cost of the units. Some strategies I've seen for diety recommends restarting the game if the scout is killed too early. I mean, there is literally no time to build a 2nd one. It's kind of insane.

I've proposed a compromise that is also more realistic; more at the link below, I'm only quoting the most important part of my idea
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=11309439&postcount=405

So my suggestion is to allow 2 types of maps to be trade-able

Classical/Medieval era allows the trade of topographical maps showing general topography of their explored areas. So you will see features like mountains, plains, hills, natural wonders (this will count as you finding them), but not cities or who is near them, though I suppose you can guess it, or resources/luxuries location. This will also be a nice incentive to explore.

Maps will be tagged with number of natural wonders in it you haven't discovered yet and you can trade those for more. Similarly the AI will ask for more to trade you their maps with wonders.

Renaissance Era allows the AI to trade you a more detailed version that shows their cities and resources as well as city states, but you will need to send an 'embassy' to meet those CS. revealing them on the map will not count (I believe this is similar to how satellites work) ; if you haven't traded any maps to this point, you will need to trade the topographical maps first, then the detailed version.

Furthermore, while any AI can trade their combined 'world view' of their topographical maps, they can only trade you the detailed maps from their own cultural line of sight. So no more exploiting that 1 uber trade where you trade 1 map to show you the entire world in its full detial.


And both civs will need 'Astronomy' tech to trade the more detailed maps.

After this point, satellites should be a modern era 'top off' to reveal bits of fog on the ocean or the territory of your hated enemy who refused to trade you their map or that large super empire who you didn't want to shell out 2k gold for.
_

 

[Buccaneer]

dexters, I would go along with that. Nice ideas. I would, however, scale it with map size and type of map, perhaps.

 

[Sestey]

Wow, these are all cool ideas, and some very well-thought out answers...very nice. Some thoughts on what's been said:

Forgot about vassals, and I loved them in cIV BTS. I would capture all of their cities, get massive unhappiness and then capitulate and liberate all their cities. They would love me forever, and I could keep them as a vassal while looking like a hero. Frankly, the puppet cities for civ 5 are lame, and let's bring back the fun.

For people who are against naval stacking, I have this point that I said in another thread: I would also add I want naval vessels to carry my land units. If we have to stack planes on carriers, then we should have to stack x amount of land units on a "carrier" ship like in cIV 4. If the ship gets sunk they die-simple. Enough of this embarked stuff. An embarked unit of infantries storming D-Day never got captured by German ships and sunk. However, infantry IN transport ships did. It is more fun, and more realistic than what it is now. Do not however, let ships stack. I think that is the basic foundation to a proper and fun amphibious invasion.

As for:
animals-yes!
cottage, village, town-yes!
More resources-yes!
Random events- yes!
Corporations- Not if they are anything like cIV BTS...terrible
Barbarian cities-YES!
Regenerate map button- YESSSS...The single-most annoying thing from civ 4-civ 5

I also agree about attacking from hills getting an advantage to a non-hills tile. I would add though that a hill-to-hill attack of any kind (including of a city) should be just cancelled out, because I also believe there should be a defensive bonus for being on top of the hill. To add to this, a unit attacking up a hill should have a penalty, because frankly that not only is obviously real, it adds to game-play, it also makes terrain more vital and exciting than the lamely simple "open" and "rough" terrain as it stands now.

Talking about terrain...this is off subject but interesting. Why do archers and siege units of any kind not get a penalty when firing into a forest, or up a hill? Do the developers believe it is too complex or something?

Additionally, why isn't there an ambush situation added to game-play? units can hide in the forest and then ambush unsuspecting units. That sounds like loads of fun, and awesome. The units like cavalry and siege units who do not get a defensive bonus do not get this ability, seems simple enough.

To piggy-back that thought, if cavalry get a penalty for attacking cities (as they should) then they should get a bonus for attacking units on the battlefield as shock troops. This might make cavalry much more important like they should be.

Oh, and if archers get a penalty for attacking cities, then siege units should get a penalty for attacking units until the cannon.

All of these penalties and bonuses would be much more historically accurate, as well as balancing these units as they said they would like to do for better game-play in G&k.

 

[MkLh]

I completely agree.

Exploration is always fun. Not only would map trading ruin aspects of the game on singleplayer, on Multiplayer it could become simply terrible again.

Exploring may be fun but need to explore every inch is not. Map trading wouldn't ruin anything on SP. Just don't use it if you don't like it.

 

[Pouakai]

What about in a similar way to how Research agreements have replaced tech trading, have exploration agreements instead of map trading? Each party pays a set ammount of gold, and then for 30 turns random tiles that the other person has explored that are adjacent to known tiles get revealed

 

[MARDUK80]

Excellent idea Pouakai!

Never thought about it like that. Exploration Agreements would be pretty balanced system, just set the gold amount correctly. Perhaps same amount/scaling than in research agreements?


One idea that I had (thanks to your earlier suggestion about map trading giving inaccurate maps to the mini-maps section), was based on http://rumsey.geogarage.com/ site. After researching Cartography you could buy small but inaccurate maps (like the real ancient/medieval maps were) from City States and other Civs. Trade would give a small map of some area and would not reveal that are in your game (in game mini-map), but you would have some idea about fe. other continent and the city locations from the given map... I dunno. Exploration agreements do sound a lot easier - straight forward style. But those old maps are just fascinating, well worth to check out that site and also Google Earth / Historical Maps.

Perhaps Google Earth with Historical maps might give you some fun to play with(?)

Definitely worth to check out --> http://rumsey.geogarage.com/
Love the look of Scandinavia 1794 map.

 

[dexters]

What about in a similar way to how Research agreements have replaced tech trading, have exploration agreements instead of map trading? Each party pays a set ammount of gold, and then for 30 turns random tiles that the other person has explored that are adjacent to known tiles get revealed

I can see that, though historically maps were indeed traded so I think some sort of map trading should still underpin the agreement.

I assume if CS is no longer gold dependent, we could use another gold sink.

 

[Monthar]

What if map trading only let you swap map info of lands within each civ's borders? Perhaps even giving LoS from each city for 5 turns, but not allowing the another map trade with that civ for 30 turns at standard speed. The LoS turns and re-trade lock-out would be adjusted for the other game speeds of course.

 

[aluelkdf]

I would also like to be able to zoom out far enough to see the whoole world. Basically the way google earth is. This doesn't affect game play at all, so I can do without this but it's still a nice feature. It just makes the game feel more real, like you are actually playing on a planet. The way it is now it's. Almost like the world is flat.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I would also like to be able to zoom out far enough to see the whoole world. Basically the way google earth is. This doesn't affect game play at all, so I can do without this but it's still a nice feature. It just makes the game feel more real, like you are actually playing on a planet. The way it is now it's. Almost like the world is flat.

Civ 4 had that, problem is it's most likely gonna end up as a huge performance hit. I can barely handle Civ 5, and I'm on lowest settings (then again, I have a [baad] computer

 

[DavidPBacon]

I would like to see again:

map and tech trading
colonies
international trading
food trading
Armies(what you know as stack, since is the most realitic form of depicting an army. A revamped war gameply would be better, though)
vassals
apostolic palace