Your top 5 'Quickish' Fixes

[RedFury_au]

EDIT: SORRY wrong board. Mod please move to "General Discussion" - thanks!

Ok, so by 'quick' I mean not re-designing core systems or making the AI better, processes which can take months and are more likely to appear in expansion packs. I mean rebalancing and simple value-changing things that are likely to make it into an early patch if its easy enough.

The aim here is to see what people MOST want changed quickly so please post your own rather than arguing with somebody else's in this thread. Thanks!

Here's mine. They are vague but its weight-of-numbers here that will show Firaxis what we'd like fixed quickly.

1) Make maritime city states give a percent-based boost to food OR only convey their bonus to the nearest X cities (maybe 3?)

2) Make the AI group its hidden modifiers into 4 or 5 categories (like pleased, friendly, annoyed, cautious in Civ 4) and at least display that overal status in diplo.

3) Make national wonders much better or their requirements not as ridiculous (barracks in ALL my cities for a 15% combat boost in 1? Are you serious??)

4) Make production easier to come by or most buildings/units cost about 75% of what they do now.

5) Give us a real resources screen and victory charts! (ok maybe not-so-quick but who knows?)

Please contribute yours!

 

[Paeanblack]

1) Update the "Game over. You won, by the way." Yeah, it's a corny pick, but what currently exists is somewhat of a downer. I want some charts, graphs, timelines, maps, etc. that lets me analyze the game I just played.

2) Link to the Civilopedia from the Main Menu

3) Puppets increase Social Policy cost.

4) A single screen that details my resource production, imports, exports, and domestic usage (where does it come from, where does it go, and what is my surplus)

5) List the luxury resources that I have and the AI wants on the diplomatic overview. I want this information frequently, and constantly going to individual trade screens just to learn this is tedious.

 

[Makaz]

1./ Stop the AI to think that I am going to invade him when he is moving his scout near my army at the other side of the map and limit the unfriendliness brought in by closeness

2./ Enable vassal states for resurected civs or AI defeated (instead of having them giving up all their cities or having to finish them off not to be bored on later). Especially resurrected ones who shouldn't turn on you later in game simply because they share a border

3./ Stop barbarian spawns at renaissance. So frustrating to have a trireme block off your commercial routes in 1900 AD because there is a camp on an unchecked 1 hex island at the other end of the map

4./ Cap the number of units an AI produce during peacetime to avoid choque and congestion over the map

5./ Make not all civs deceptives, only some of them, so it is possible to build some everlasting relationship with a nearby empire when playing it fair, ie not doing anything bad to them, with non deceptives AI. I admit some of them have to be irrationnal or deceptive but not ALL of them so we can feel a difference when playing versus the egyptian or the greeks beyond the fact that one is going to dow with war chariots and the other with cc.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Have puppets increase social policy costs but balance this by adding a couple of governor options such as "don't grow" and "don't build improvements". In other words, puppets shouldn't bankrupt you.

Have science scale exponentially by population in a city (so large cities are better citizen for citizen than large empires).

I'll definitely echo number 5 from the first post and number 4 from the second. Basically, easier to access information if we want it.

EDIT: I'll address some of Makaz's points more directly because I agree and disagree with all of them.

1. I don't think the scout thing hurts you, so don't worry. The unfriendliness by closeness is an interesting one. I think my caveat would be this. Have the AI learn the difference between aggressive settling and coincidental settling. They should not be upset if their cities expand to you, for example. While perhaps tension should exist, it shouldn't immediately bring hostility, perhaps just greater caution.

2. Vassals were annoying, but I wouldn't mind bringing them back for resurrected Civs.

4. I would agree, provided it doesn't hurt the AI during wartime.

5. I'm going to expand on this. Bring back the possibility of blocs. Either temporary or long-term. Perhaps public alliances would be a nice idea (basically, pact of cooperation, but hostile AIs will not let you sign one with both sides). Maybe a gold boost or something to encourage this (similar to research pacts in a way).

 

[delra]

In short?
1. Military AI.
2. Production.
3. Tech tree.
4. Unit rebalances.
5. Civilization rebalances.

 

[madscientist]

1) Fix the Horsemen. Increase costs, hincrease AI building spears/pikes, nerf city attack, require archery.

2) Change happiness resoruces to specific numbers like strategic resources, and give 1 happy face per resource after a base 3for having teh resource. Allow trading number of resources.

3) Alter gold maintenance. Roads cheaper (1 gold), otehr building cheaper, etc...

4) Alter diplomacy to permit peaceful existance with neighbors. A better "status" indicator like Civi Iv (recommended by OP) would be fine, no need to have numbers.

5) Adjust worker improvements. Extra hammer on mines at a certaint tech, TP start with one gold but increase over time or with unlocking techs.

6) Let buildings give multiple benfits such as extra culture with a specific resource, extra gold, extra science etc....

There are more, but these will add more depth to the game.

 

[Paeanblack]

3./ Stop barbarian spawns at renaissance. So frustrating to have a trireme block off your commercial routes in 1900 AD because there is a camp on an unchecked 1 hex island at the other end of the map

In 2010, several nations currently have the equivalent of Missile Cruisers patrolling the Red Sea to keep the shipping lanes open. At least the real-world equivalent of Civ barbarians don't have Destroyers and Battleships.

 

[Celevin]

Really good thread.


1- Remove puppets entirely, change the Annex unhappiness so it slowly goes away with time.

2- Change walls and other defensive buildings to be maintenance free. How often were they built in Civ4 being maintenance free again?

3- Change all slingshots (great scientists, wonders) to be a bonus science instead

4- Lower the cost of all buildings/units to 3/4 on Epic, Marathon

5- Fix upgrading by making sure units don't keep unique bonuses, and make the cost of all upgrades the difference in hammers, then converted to a gold cost. Goal is it's the same price to buy a unit as it is to buy an older unit, then upgrade

 

[Lyoncet]

1) Document an overview of each leader's personality. I know it's not a fix, but we do know there's a fair number of things that go into that mysterious black box called the AI, but everything we know about what actually has what impact we've gotten from people digging through spreadsheets. Knowing things like, for example (just making these up), "Washington hates it more than anyone else if you declare on a city-state" or "Wu will often backstab a player with lots of cities and a small army and culture" or something would bring diplo from "well this is all completely random" (it's not, by the way) to "well even if I don't know everything that's going on, I have some idea of how I can influence diplomacy." One of the biggest issues in-game right now.

2) Make the AI able to differentiate between defensive and offensive war in terms of diplo hits. Don't know if that would be a big fix or not.

3) Gifting cities shouldn't reduce policy cost; instead, every city you lose in whatever way should allow you one more city in the future without the cost going back up. So if a policy costs you 1000 culture right now, and you gift two cities, it still costs 1000, but you can build two more cities before it goes up again.

4) Puppets don't make buildings that make no sense (military buildings, walls if they're not at a border, windmills if they're hammer-poor, etc.)

5) For the love of god, make the AI stop settling in my freakin' face when they're on the other side of the freakin' continent and then DoWing on me for my "aggressive expansion"! OK I'm better now. Seriously though, this is probably the most broken part of the diplo AI right now. Plus, I'm marginally OCD, so even if we stay at peace, I've got this big ugly wrong-colored city right in the middle of all of mine which just grinds me. Not that that's the primary reason this should be fixed mind you.

I disagree on making national wonders easier. I think the point of them is to give an intrinsic boost to smaller civs, which they do just fine. Some really do suck though, you're right.