Civ 4 - the list of ideas for Firaxis [Archive] - Apolyton Civilization Site Forums

Solver

December 5, 2003, 10:22

Combat

Some generaly thoughts on combat. Overall, I would certainly prefer a combat system like in Call to Power. I know that many civ gamers agree here, and those who hate the CtP model basically just couldn't understand it.

The pros of CtP combat model are: it requires more thinking and planning, and it makes the random factor less of an importance.

CtP combat works in stacks. That is, if the city is defended by 5 Spearmen, and you are attacking it with 5 Swordsmen, then one battle takes place - with all 10 units in it. Likewise, if there's a single Rifleman standing somewhere, and you have 3 Cavalry near it, then all will shoot the Rifleman at once. This makes perfect sense. In Civ 3, it's possible to put a defensive unit on a mountain, and count on it to kill a good deal of enemy soldiers. This is ridicilous. My often used trick with naval invasions in Civ3 - find a tile with a defensive bonus, and drop 3-4 defensive units there. The AI will attack those with its nearby units, and you can count on each of your defenders to take 3 attackes with it, if not more.

In CtP, battles are harder because of this, and the unit classes. Some engage in melee battles, some are ranged. For instance, if you have a stack of 2 Swordsmen and 2 Archers, then, when you attack, they form two lines, with Swordsmen in front, and Archers in the back. Melee units fight each other and take damage, while the ranged line fires at those, taking no damage. Once the melee units (first line) are dead, then the second line is forced to step in the first line. Note that units that may have a very high ranged attack (like Artillery) still suck at melee combat. Artillery is no better at melee than a simple horseman - which, again, makes sense.

This approach makes attacking cities realistic. All of the defenders defend, not one by one. And attackers don't wait for a friend to die to attack. Of course, when attacking, you can select with how many and what units you attack - you may want to attack with 6 and leave another 6 back, although that's hardly a good idea.

Note that this combat system helps produce interesting results. The maximal stack size is 12, so the biggest battle includes 24 units. I have seen one 12 stack kill the other completely without losses, and I've seen 23 of 24 units die. If you have a strong defensive stack, and the enemy is attacking with an attacking one that isn't good enough, expect your stack to win. But, a battle of 24 evenly matched units is going to be close.

This also makes the battles more dynamic, as you watch the progress in a "battle view" window, showing the details of combat, lines changing, etc.

I'd be really happy to see the CtP syste included in Civ 4. It's realistic, it's tested, it works, and it produces good results. Even the source code of implementation is available for the Firaxis developers to look at.

That's just one of my many ideas so far :).

Asmodean

December 5, 2003, 11:28

REGIONAL MENU AND CITY MENU IDEAS

I would like to see the city model changed. As it is now, a city, once large enough, has 21 squares to extract food, production and trade from. And each of these squares has a "population point" allocated to work it. My idea is as follows:

Don't use population points in Civ 4. Use actual numbers. As in London has a population of 345,785 people. When creating military units, subtract the size of the unit from the pop. of the city. Allow players to set the size of settlers themselves. This would allow players to start a city with 1,000 or 10,000 people, depending on what the player feels is needed in the current game situation.

Do away with the idea that every square generates trade. Trade should depend not only on terrain, but also on population. Keep the food and shields concept. It's tried, tested and it works.

I would like to see production divided. The player should be able to set percentages in each city for production. So and so goes to city improvements. So and so goes to weaponry. So and so goes to public works.

Building city improvements should be as it is now. You decide on a project, and the city uses the production you have allocated in the city improvements pool to finish the product. How many turns this will take depends on a) Production requirement for the project b) Overall production potential for the city and c) How many procent of that you have allocated to city improvements.

For military, I would like to see that each unit in the game has a certain population requirement and a certain weaponry requirement. Whenever the player wishes to create a military unit, the required population would be subtracted from the population of the city. And the required weaponry (representing weapons, uniforms, back-up functions etc.) would be subtracted from the city's weaponry pool. If the weaponry pool does not currently contain sufficient weaponry, it would take a number of turns to create the unit. However if sufficient weaponry and population is available, the unit would be created instantly.

Public works I would like to see in the game for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it would do away with the armies of workers that we see in Civ 3. IMO the workers are too time consuming to manage, especially in the late game. The publiv works model is more elegant IMO. I would like to see a city specific version of the public works model. Have each city (as described above) allocate a percentage of production to public works, which the city can then use to improve the terrain around the city. For terrain improvements outside city areas, the empire should be able to draw on the PW pool of whatever city the player chooses.

Finally, I would like to see cities grow beyond the 21 squares. If the city is getting large, then the area that it impacts is also large. That's how it is in the real world, and that's how it should be in Civ.

Asmodean

Adagio

December 5, 2003, 12:40

How about just copy/paste the old Civ3 wishlist? ;)

Asmodean

December 5, 2003, 13:13

Originally posted by ADG
How about just copy/paste the old Civ3 wishlist? ;)

Too much time has passed. Furthermore, many ideas will be inspired by the changes to the series that Civ 3 introduced, so the old list is just that: Old :)

Asmodean

Brundlefly

December 5, 2003, 13:29

Well, let me just put in a plug for a "land claim" feature as described in this other thread: here (http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=103162)

The diplomat

December 5, 2003, 17:09

I'd really like to see civ4 have civ traits based on player actions. For example, build x temples, gain the religious trait, build x barracks and you gain the militaristic trait. If you city improvements were destroyed and you fell under the limit, you would lose the trait. This would make civ traits very dynamic. Civs would gain and lose civ traits as the game progressed. You could start with militaristic/commercial, but maybe become agricultural/scientific later in the game.

Japher

December 5, 2003, 18:28

The Diplomat: I like your idea. The thought of an adjusting, uh, structure like that would be interesting.

TERRAIN AND TERRAIN IMPROVEMENTS

Natural Wonders. Small percentage chance, when you build a town, that there is a natural wonder near-by. It would be cool to have them on the map, and you can build near it, but I think the map would have enough to deal with. Thus, just add it as a town/terrain function. Not sure what it would give, maybe culture points.

Natural Parks and Protective land. If you are going to be able to designate boarders it would also be cool to designate natural parks that could help combat pollution. This land could sacrifice shield bonus' for commerace.

Jaguar

December 5, 2003, 21:27

Culture:

Sacked Capital Causes Severe Problems
When a civ's capital is taken, there should be more ramifications. There should be a great chance that a city the civ owns that is close to culture flipping will do so on that turn. Also, if a civ completely conquered another civ, then the conquered civ can come back if the capital is sacked. So for example, if Rome is sacked, the outer territories they conquered like England and Egypt will become their own civ again, even if they were completely knocked out of the game.

Bonaparte

December 5, 2003, 22:08

I got an idea...why don't they make Civ 4 without any bugs!!!:hmmm:

MarkG

December 5, 2003, 22:40

for easier reading, please present your ideas in the following format

short up-to-10-words sentence giving the essence of the idea
single paragraph detailing the idea. be as concrete as possible, large ammounts of text are harder to read

dexters

December 5, 2003, 23:59

Provinces, each a unit, like a mini Civ, each with a capital, and each made up of cities, definable by the player, but it must be geographic in nature. Can't have provinces spread all over the place.

This, I've argued, can actually work to improve AI defenses since it can now recognize threat in chunks of cities/territory, rather than threats to one city. Also opens the door to civil wars, and perhaps civs splintering off.

There was a thread on this. If someone can find it, cool, if not, I'll find it this weekend.

DarkCloud

December 6, 2003, 00:39

this link should work: http:home.att.net/~civgames/ideas.html

DarkCloud

December 6, 2003, 00:40

And it does- there's the list that I compiled shortly after Civ III itself came out ;) I'm quite proud of it ;) feel free to add to it or to take things off it and make your own list ;)

Skanky Burns

December 6, 2003, 02:32

GAME ATMOSPHERE
City council over moving leader-heads

MrFun

December 6, 2003, 03:23

stacked combat
I strongly agree with the others here on this concept used so effectively in the two CTP titles.
Stacked combat would make battles more realistic than they currently are in Civilization III -- I'm sure the guys at Atari can create their own twist/version of stacked combat that is similar to what was in CTP titles, but add some unique flair to it.

migration
I do not know if this would be too complicated, but if there is a simple way to stimulate migration through the progamming language in designing the game, it woud great, in my opinion.
Here is what I'm thinking the way migration could work in Civilization IV:

1) intramigration--some of your citizens will move from one city to another within your civilization, taking away one or two population points, and adding them to destination city, making population growth and decline more realistic.

2) emigration/immigration--some of your citizens will migrate to another civilization whose culture is significantly higher than yours, removing one or two population points from your civilization and adding one or two population points to that other civilization city that is the destination

as for factors that determine when intramigration and emigration/immigration occurs:

a) odds of your citizens moving from one city to another within your civilization will increase if they live in a city considerably less developed than the one they're attracted to (comparison of city improvements, wonders, and terrain improvement surrounding cities)

and another factor would be if there is a significant greater number of happy faces in city they're attracted to

b) odds of losing some of your citizens to another civilization depends on how much greater the other civilization's culture is compared to yours, and the proximity of that civilization to yours (overseas on another continent, or next door neighbor, or separated from you on same continent with another civilization)

another factor would be if you and other civilization have similar regional identity (European, American, so forth) or if you're more dramatically different

I'm not sure how you can program this new game factor, if it's possible at all. I'm also not sure how you would program to determine how often these would occur -- other words, not necessarily always, automatically occuring just because factors are already present

Jon Miller

December 6, 2003, 03:47

this (for civ3) was whta brought me to apolyton

Jon Miller

Jon Miller

December 6, 2003, 03:59

I like the improvment of armies, and tihnk that Civ4 shuold continue with them (so no stacked combat except for armies)

however I feel that armies should get bonuses for using combined arms and the like

sort of the same idea as a stack

in reality a stack would take organization which was often in limited supply

there was a big difference between troops, and using them properly

I always thought of armies as sort of learning the concepts of organized warfare

also not having stacked combat adds some tactical parts to civ which has always been there and is fun (but not realistic)

it is part of the abstraction

it should still be TBS

I also think that it should be multiplayer from the ground up (just have a healthy single player game), but I am not really sure how to do this well

the scenarios that they included in conquests seem like a good idae (I will have to explore them more) in relation to solving the multiplayer problem

Jon Miller

Jon Miller

December 6, 2003, 04:03

if higher complexity path is chosen (like in governments or units)

making it so that only realistic models can be chosen (or are useful) would be good

while there were lots of choices in SMAC, there were only a couple of optimised ones

I would rather not play a game of optimization

Jon Miller

Jon Miller

December 6, 2003, 04:23

I like the idea of subtracting pop to build troops

but I would probably have it so that it would subtract food, and if it dropped you a pop point, so be it

this would make the difference between building troops with small cities and builidng troops with larger cities

Jon Miller

Jon Miller

December 6, 2003, 04:36

one thing that I agree with is that you are getting too many units in the game

lots of units are great, but they can slow things downa nd lead to tedium

and armies are a great idea so it would be good to increase them (I am not suggesting going to complete stacked combat)

anyways so my idea

military win give
armies which can only be made up of one type of unit, and can only be made up of 3 units

you can than build a SW or something like that to have (this is still in the ancient era), 4 unit armies

at the end of the ancient era, there is a tech that allows you to put two types of standard units in an army (standard means nonbombard or other specials) and have symmetry bonuses)

a later tech allows (end of renaissance) 6 unit armies

another tech allows you to put in bombard units (and other specials), there are also more symmetry bonuses (gotten by proper use of combined arms)

another tech allows 8 unit armies, and maybe an SW (towards the end of the modern era) allows 12 unit armies

this would all make it so that there are less units to move at the different stages of the game and cut down on tedium

make it so that lots of units in a square when not on a fortress or city will be negative (if they are not an army)

the 1-stack attacks and the like get a little boring

I also think that the concept of less is more should be looked at (especially to assist in making multiplayer fun)

Jon Miller

Jon Miller

December 6, 2003, 04:38

also an army should just own against a similiar number of similair units

and a combined arms army should own (when done properly) agianst a single unit army

Jon Miller

Jon Miller

December 6, 2003, 04:43

I think that there shoudl still be settlers/workers (still thinking in Civ1 and Civ2 terms)

I like the power that having individual units gives me

but it should be advantageous to have just a few, not a ton

like make it so that they have a seperate upkeep (like food in Civ2), so that there is a maximum (and an optimum under that maximum) for a given civ size

probably this also means that they should get faster and better as the ages go by

so there should be a tech that makes it so that your workers work twice as fast (There should be maybe 4 of these)

basically having 20-40 (or more) settlers is too many to be fun, having 5-20 is fun

make it so the whole game it is best to have less than 15

Jon Miller

Jon Miller

December 6, 2003, 04:47

I like civ3s trading system better than civ2s

I felt as a leader I should just be finding the paths to different civs, it was up to the citizens to actually do the trading

but one thing I miss is the danger of sending caravans arround

but what would even be better is to have trade routes active on the board

this would allow things like raiding trade routes and blockades, both seem like interestings choices to make

and that is what a good game has lot of, interesting choices (it should ahve little optimizatino)

Jon Miller

Jon Miller

December 6, 2003, 05:00

one other thing is that city guards have a very different role than troops groups

basically troops groups you move arround, to defend your territory or take territory

city guards are just suppost to keep your city free of raiders, make it more content in some governments, and the like

the only parts of the game where there is any cross between the two is the early game, where the city guard is a valuable portion of your total troop strength, and throughout the rest of the game when you capture a city (And need to leave behind defenders/unrest quellers)

basically this radical difference in uses should be used to streamline the game and make it so that there are less units runnign arround

I should not have to mess with city guards the same way as I mess with the army

also, guards are not going to be at the same level of training and preparedness as a standing army

one way this could be done is to have a produce city guard button

this 'structure' would be an imoveable (except when a mobilize city guard chioce is pressed) guard to the city which would automatically upgrade to whatever your best defense was but would have moral (or expereince) one less than the type of units that city woudl produce

you would be able to build this multiple times, and could tell a unti to become a city guard (There would probably be some sort of cost associated with this)

this you would not ahve to consider and bother with city defense except to build a 'structure'

this should streamline play enormously (when I am at a time of peace and know I will be so for a while, often more than half my military units are city defenders)

Jon Miller

Jon Miller

December 6, 2003, 05:18

I think that Civ4 should be multiplayer form the ground up

while I rarely play civ3 multiplayer (it is not the best to do that way) that is still how I normally play it because I like playing wtih my friends

one possibiltier to make civ4 mroe multiplayer iis this

make it so that every game had a server
this server woudl handle things like AI and where everthing is
for a single person game you would be your own server

bur for a lan or internet game people woudl connect to the server (and the server might not even be playing)

make the two sort of independent

the idea of conquests was a good one, and something like that should continue to exist

but Is till ike the epic game best, and I think a lto of other people do also

massive multiplayer idea 1

one idea of massive internet play is this (can probably be done on the lan also)

have a game start on a server

make an AI governor sort of thing

and than play with simultaneous turns, with the turn thing set for some constant unit of time which is suffiencently long

have a password to enter your game

have different servers set for different speeds

and so you (and your freinds) can play as a civ on one server that is going in real time

and for the turns youc an't be there, you have the AI run things

so a server would just be running constantly, and you would log on and play some turns

but while you were gone it would keep on playing (AIs would control)

you could also make the time control geographically depended, like a given server could be set to have time stopped for vertain hours of the day

than the game would go on from like 8-12 on modays, wednesday, and fridays, and if you don't show up, you have a compter (which yuo gave orders to) play for you

massive multiplayer idea 2

this idea is a little more different

basically you start a game

and the server has a whole bunch of people who start at roughly the same time start playing at once

and it keeps track of what sort of land you have and the like, as well as ech you have and what date it is

and than you log off

next time you play, you log on again, but none of your last group are on right now

so the server sticks you with a new group

this group is at the same time as you

but it is a different world, made by the server as an amogumatino of your previous world, and their previous world(s)

and oyu have the same techs as before and the like

but of course alliances and trades would no longer be in effect

and it could be sort of hard to make a new world to fit everyone's empires in

I admit that this is a wierd idea, it iis interestng though

Jon Miller

Solver

December 6, 2003, 08:04

The problem with the worker model is, it becomes too slow and too tedious.

Moving each worker by hand and assigning oders is too slow. That can become boring and tedious. Also, even when automated, it takes them all a while to move and carry out their actions - which goes far to make the game run much slower. Those who have played Civ 3 with 16 or more civs in a game will know what I'm speaking of - just all the Workers are enough to make it slow.

Brundlefly

December 6, 2003, 08:54

I think Jon Miller has taken over this thread... :lol:

Got a lot on your mind today, Jon?

The point you brought up about missing the caravan/freight units from Civ2 got me thinking:

We have hidden nationality unit already, privateers. This is for carrying out covert military ops. Why not bring back caravan/freight unit as a hidden nationality for covert trade. This unit could be used for some or all of the following reasons: to traffic 1)illegal goods; 2) trade with a civ you are at war with; 3)provide a fascist govt a means for trade revenue. If any nation intercepts this unit as it tries to reach its destination, a reputation hit is suffered.

Solver

December 6, 2003, 09:32

United Nations

Short description:

Various ideas to make the United Nations an exciting part of the game and playing an important part in the Modern age. Partially reposted from a thread I made during the early Civ 3 days.

Detailed description:

Generally, it has been mentioned by many posters that the United Nations, as it stands in Civ 3, is not a good concept. It merely has one function - voting for the diplomatic victory. Those who have played SMAC will say that the Planetary Council there was better.

I see the United Nations as an organization in which several civilizations participate, being the leading powers of the world. I hope that, in Civ 4, games with 8 civilizations will no longer be the standard, but rather games with 16 civilizations will be.

Therefore, I suggest two general requiremens to be a member of the UN:

1. Build a United Nations Embassy small wonder. Without this, you can't become a member of the UN.

2. The second requirement, if it was Civ 3, would be, I say, some culture per turn output. Maybe Civ 4 provides something better I don't know. The idea here is, that this requirement would separate the third-level civs from the most powerful ones. I don't think that military size is a good one, because you can be the powerhouse without the biggest military. And the civilization score tends to be too abstract.

So, if you meet the two requirements, you become a member of the UN. Then, any member can call a UN meeting, but there should be some sort of a limit. Not a big one, though, since it's late game already. Maybe, 5 turns minimum between meetings and 10 turns between another review of the same proposal. The UN secretary general should be the exception to both rules.

About the abovementioned Secretary General. Before any other proposal can be considered, the UN must have a SG. It’s elected by a simple majority (more than 50% of votes) by the members. The type of vote here is seat vote. Eligible should only be two candidates, the ones who have more votes than the other countries. This brings us to the subject of vote calculation, but let that go a little bit later. So, the Secretary General is an exception to the period of UN meetings rule. SG also holds a right of veto, both in the country vote and seat vote. I’ll explain these concepts now.

Seat vote is when each civ has a certain number of votes, calculated by a specific formula. Country vote is when a vote of any civ counts as one vote. Number of the seats a civ gets in the UN should, again, be dependant on culture. I do also think that the whole UN thing would then raise cultural priority for people. I think that the UN should have quite some power, and thus culture will be valued higher by people in MP games, because a crafty bargainer could use the UN votes to his advantage.

So, we have a constant value of n – that’s the minimal culture to enter the UN. You get one seat for each culture point per turn you have above the n-1 value. That is, if n is 250 (don’t know if it’s balanced, again) and you are producing exactly 250 culture points per turn, you only have 1 seat in the UN. If you produce as much as 320 culture points per turn, you get 71 seats in the UN. Let’s say this number is m.

However, m isn’t exactly the number of seats you get. For each Great Wonder you possess, m is increased by 10. For each Small Wonder, m gets an increase of 3. For each Great Leader you’ve had during the game, m is increased by 20 (will make the Leader more important!). These are the positive factors impacting m, and creating the number k.

Note: the factors for number k are taken from Civ 3. Maybe Civ 4 has no leaders, or has something else to add to the calculation. The idea is, that this number should be affected by the important aspects of civilization such as those mentioned above.

However, the negative factors are to take impact now, altering k. For each time you’ve used a nuclear weapon, k is decreased by 10%. Thus, a civ using much nukes just can’t be a major power in the UN. For each time you break a peace treaty by sneak attacking, you get 15 seats subtracted. If you declare war in negotiations, there’s no penalty, this only applies to sneak attacks. For each time you sneak attack OR declare war on the civilization you have a Right of Passage agreement, you lose 10 seats from k. This creates the number f, the final number of seats in the UN you get.

Note: If civ 4 features other weapons such as chemical or biological, then the use of those should also impact your final number of seat votes.

Yes, I know that it's not exactly realistic for the number of votes to change with your negative actions. This will also prevent a tactic I used often in SMAC to get the majority of votes - just go ahead and use chemical weapons on other civs, so that their population (and, consequently, the amount of votes) would get reduced.

Take in account that a civ in the UN should always have at least one seat. Even if the negative factors are more than positive, the seat number doesn't go into the negative numbers or anything.

Back to the UN Secretary General, for a bit. Being elected the SG doesn’t give you victory, not at all. To win, you have to be elected the Supreme Leader (better term, anyone?). You can only be elected as the Supreme Leader if you are at peace with everyone currently. Elections for the Supreme Leader are also by the seat vote method; however, you must gain 75% of votes to become the Supreme Leader. Note again - you can't gas around everyone and have 75% all by yourself as in SMAC, because reducing enemy population by atrocious means will likely mean that you are actually going to lose votes on your own.

As I said, the Secretary General has the veto right in the UN. What it means – if it’s a seat vote, then the number of votes for “Yes” decreases by 50%, giving the Secretary General a nice chance to get what he wants. If it’s a country vote (each country one vote), than the Veto overrides all those “Yes” votes, *unless* ALL the civs vote “Yes”. That is, if there are 6 UN members, 5 vote “Yes” on the matter, while the sixth one, which is the Secretary General, says “Veto”, the decision still passes. Otherwise, the veto is executive.

Among other proposals, there will, of course, be a possibility to elect a new Secretary General. I will now give a list of various proposals for the UN, but I think there could and should be more, ideas welcome.

o Elect the Secretary General (Seat vote, simple majority to accept).
This is what makes a new Secretary General come to the driver’s seat. Of course, the previous one can retain.

o Elect the Supreme Leader (Seat vote, 75% or more to accept).
This is what I’d like to see as the Diplomatic Victory. Should be hard enough, and close to that in SMAC, a better model.

o Global Embargo (Country vote, majority to accept)
Vote initiator can choose any civ to direct the Global Embargo at. If accepted, all UN members must declare Embargo on the victim civ. The Embargo can not be cancelled by any leader, only by the UN - the Repeal Global Embargo proposal. The embargo, in Civ 3, would mean no trade of luxuries and strategic resources - modify as applicable for Civ 4.

o Global War (Seat vote, majority to accept)
Vote initiator can choose any civ to direct the Global War at. If accepted, all UN members must declare war on the victim civ. Within the first 10 turns after the measure is taken, you get no option to sign a Peace Treaty. Moreover, all the UN civs are then allied, so signing a Peace Treaty first will likely strain your relationships. This one can be really strong... add something if the vote fails, I think. For instance, a right for the civ against whom the global war was proposed (and failed) to attack the UN members without a diplomatic penalty, or something.

o Repeal Global Embargo (Country vote, majority to accept)
A civ with Global Embargo on it is chosen. If accepted, the Embargo against that civ by all the UN members ends automatically.

o Repeal Global War (Seat vote, majority to accept)
A civ with Global War waged on it is chosen. If accepted, the war against that civ by all the UN members ends automatically – that is, a Peace Treaty is signed. The alliances are also cancelled, and there’s no diplomatic relations penalty for anyone.

Both Repeal proposals can't be called within, say, 5 turns after the Global Embargo/War has started.

o Expulsion from the UN (Seat vote, 66% or more to accept)
Vote initiator can chose any UN member. If the proposal is accepted, the nation gets out of the UN. In order to return to the UN, 20 turns must pass, after that the Civ returns to the UN automatically. I think this is OK. AI notice - AI should favor explusion of countries that are too aggressive in the UN.

o Nuclear Missile Decrease (Country vote, majority to accept)
Vote initiator selects a number of nuclear missiles. If accepted, any civ with that number of nuclear missiles or more than that must disband the agreed number of them within 5 turns. If not done, the member failing to do so faces a 20 turn expulsion, and there’s a strain of relationships - the latter probably being the more important penalty.

o End Military Conflict (Seat vote, majority to accept)
Vote initiator selects any two civs currently at war. If accepted, the two nations automatically sign a Peace Treaty.

Just a couple of proposals here, as I said, I welcome more. Note that you can make two such proposals 5 turns after each other: End Military Conflict, Rome and Greece. 5 turns later you can make another: End Military Conflict, England and India. Offering two same nations is considered the same proposal, and can only happen once in 10 turns.

If a UN member uses nuclear weapons vs. another UN member, a vote about his expulsion from the UN is initiated automatically.

Maybe some sort of a UN Peacekeeper unit should be added, but my ideas aren't too specific yet there...

Shogun Gunner

December 6, 2003, 09:33

I read somewher on another thread (was it Spiffor's idea? I can't remember) that the population and settler units should be more accurate to the number of people. Instead of a "size 12" city -> "a size 12,034,520 city"

The settler unit could be built for 1,000; 5,000 or 10,000 size. A larger settler size gets the new city started faster than a smaller one.

I think this idea has a lot of potential for variation in strategy. Certainly the REXing strategy is more flexible. Maybe you want to firmly claim a section of good land, so you send your largest settler unit to start the city...smaller size settler units for less important terrain or expanding borders, etc.

Solver

December 6, 2003, 09:39

No, in Civ 3, there's real AI-AI conquest, and the current AI model doesn't treat the player as a single enemy, like the Civ 2 AI did.

Brundlefly

December 6, 2003, 10:00

A nice feature for PBEM players would be to see battle results of all battles in which you were a defender since you last took your turn. This could be provided simply as a text file, or could be provided as actual battle replays that you could watch.

Fosse

December 6, 2003, 10:19

Simultaneous Moves
Forget Civ 3's "turnless." I mean that each turn has a movement phase. During your turn you tell troops where to go, and they have standing orders for what to do if they encounter other troops. If two nations' units meet during the turn phase, they go to their orders to determine what happens.

The standing orders would have extremely simple defaults (attack when enemies, maintain path when friends), but could be very tailored by the player. (dig in and hold ground to last man when encountering the French, rolling retreat if encountering English in numbers twice ours, etc).

After everyone has played their turn, the movement phase occurs, battles that happen are shown, and then the next turn begins.

This would be more fun, strategically, would allow the AI to "play" during the player's turn (since they wouldn't actually have to move units, they could be spending extra CPU time devising strategy and so forth), and would make for a much smoother transition from singleplayer to multiplayer. While I disagree with the idea that the game should be built "from the ground up" for multiplayer, this change adds so much to both that it's a no-brainer.

Stacked Combat
Call to Power I and II have better combat models than any other Civ game. Improve or modify them, tinker with the rules, whatever you must, but USE THEM!!!

This change would add realism, as no army in history ever fought one unit at a time when there were dozens present at a battle. It would add good old fashioned strategy (Infantry or cavalry, tanks or artillery, what will the enemy be fighting with, where will the fight happens, where do I WANT the fight to happen???), and perhaps most importantly of all REDUCE MICROMANGEMENT.

Public Works
However you do it, so long as I don't spend the bulk of my turns shuffling workers.

Editor
Give us the power we had over Civ II and the Call to Power series... and more! There should be so much at our disposal that we don't even think about Civ V for another five years.

Hire these guys
Clash of Civilizations (http://apolyton.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=32) :cute:

Maybe not everything they want in their game will make a great mass market game, but their design docs represent to me the ideal Civ game. They could only help any Civ project, in my opinion.

That's all for now...

edited for clarity

Father Beast

December 6, 2003, 12:34

FIX ICS

I may harp on this from time to time, and no one will listen, especially Firaxis, but I'll say it again

The Only Way To Fix ICS Is To Get Rid Of The Free City Square:doitnow!: :doitnow!: :doitnow!:

It has been demonstrated that it can be done in the freeware game, Civ-evo. Each settler takes 2 pop points to build, and each city starts at size 2, with one citizen working the city square and one working another square. There is and can be no ICS advantage.

Of course, since someone else has already done it, that makes it impossible that Firaxis will touch it.

I'm sorry, but it made me sick how in Civ3, they said they would fix ICS, then did threw the bandaid of 2 pop settlers at it and crippled the game with corruption, then called it fixed.

For this single game mechanic, Civ-evo is the only civ I can bring myself to finish a game of these days.:(

Fosse

December 6, 2003, 12:51

Regarding ICS... didn't CtP II work EVERY city square in the city radius regardless of the citiy's population, just at a reduced rate?

If yes, did this impact ICS? If no, would it?

Solver

December 6, 2003, 13:00

There was no ICS in CtP2. Yes, cities had those radiuses (that would expand based on size), and each square within that radius was worked. No worker shifting... oh, and stuff in CtP2 is rather expensive, so no, you don't get Knights built in 3 turns from all your cities...

The key there was the city limits. Every government had a city limit, and if you exceeded that, there were happiness penalties. While building a city above the limit was OK, if you got 3 above the limit, you would get some very serious rioting.

Jon Miller

December 6, 2003, 13:13

Solver

December 6, 2003, 13:40

Yeah, and going for a public works model is the better choice. How exactly will you make 10-15 Workers optimal? Either give them some weird and high upkeep costs, but that will generally just make everything less productive, or make the game favor really small empires - which will remove the fun for many.

MrFun

December 6, 2003, 13:53

Originally posted by Solver
I hope that, in Civ 4, games with 8 civilizations will no longer be the standard, but rather games with 16 civilizations will be.

Um . . . . . .

guess what -- Civilization III DOES allow you to play games with up to 16 civs.

Solver

December 6, 2003, 14:08

Did you see the word standard in my post? While you can play with 24 civs in Civ 3, 8 is the standard, for speed and interface reasons.

Jon Miller

December 6, 2003, 14:12

Originally posted by Solver
Yeah, and going for a public works model is the better choice. How exactly will you make 10-15 Workers optimal? Either give them some weird and high upkeep costs, but that will generally just make everything less productive, or make the game favor really small empires - which will remove the fun for many.

do like before, where there were food upkeep costs (For example)

also, make it so the workers increase effiency as time goes on

make it so that working outside of your city radius makes people really unhappy

make it so that there are bad effects for too many workers

Jon Miller

Solver

December 6, 2003, 14:14

And this is far too complex a solution, which would be bad for the AI, and generally add no fun, while making an attempt to solve a problem.

Jon Miller

December 6, 2003, 14:19

how come?

I enjoy doing workers early

I don;t late

so they should lookat why I enjoy doing it early and not late

and make it so that I (And others) enjoy it all the time

workers icrease efficieny is not something strange

nor is additinaly upkeep costs (they use to have them)

having soemthing else in addition is just more of the same

Jon Miller

Trifna

December 6, 2003, 14:29

COMBAT

From TechWins (http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=99640) :
When two nations are at war and there are enemy units in the other nation's territory there needs to be more of an effect. As it is now you're not able to harvest that tile the enemy unit is in. I don't think that is enough. I think that all surrounding tiles should lose 1 food, 1 shield, and 1 trade. To not make it too extreme, only once can a tile be effected by surrounding enemies. So if two enemies were on seperate tiles but surrounding a same tile that tile would still only lose 1 food, 1 shiled, and 1 trade. This isn't exactly that far fetched of an implementation, either.

Currently almost all the wars only take place in the cities, since there isn't much benefit fighting outside of the city. Well, this will make it a big loss having enemy units inside your territory. You will be almost forced to go attack those units and get them out of your territory. This will finally give more effect to being in enemy territory.

DIPLOMACY

Colonization... a REAL one. One where you can decide, when you conquer, to make as if you had not conquered and to just to control. Of course, colonization of ressources like the French colonization is also useful, but it's not like English colonization of India. Result: less chances to get revolts and gradually assimilates.

And yes, they should give a look at what these guys from the Clash of Civilizations did. And perhaps also that some good ideas can come from Galactic Civilizations.

Trifna

December 6, 2003, 14:56

DIPLOMACY
Some United Nations that hace councils and actually change SOMETHING into the game.
(from Galactic Civilizations)
Since we're at it, incorporate influence somewhat like in GalCiv.

CIVILIZATIONS
Minor civilizations, that can conquer and are not just there to be conquered. I guess those can come from different events.
(again, like in Galactic Civilizations)

ECONOMICS/TRADE
Somehow, incorporate major trade routes so that those can be cut (like when Constinople was taken in 1493), and so that we can SEE trading.
(from Galactic Civilizations)

CITY IMPROVEMENTS
When a city gets about like New York, it can produce wheat in asphalt. So perhaps the graphics around should change from plains to little buildings being part of New York. Thus, you would need to give a basic orientation to your aagglomerations. Some would be more towards industry, others towards agriculture or else. Improvements should give an orientation to production, city growth, etc.

MOVEMENT, SUPPLY, ETC.
Troops should supply themselves by two ways:
1- Physical supplies
Like in Iraq: you get trucks to your troops with everything.
2- Local supplies
In the past, most of the supplies were mostly from forcing people to give you what you need.

Both of these two have consequences, like the need to build and protect some SUPPLY ROUTES, or the population not loving you...
Supply routes can be done simply by determining the path of this line. The more enemy are round these lines, the most of your supplies will be disrupted.

COMBAT
We had checked all battles in history, and one can also look at the Waterloo battle's tactics more in detail. Result: the more you have troops and the less the other has troops, the biggest advantage you have towards the other. 5000 vs 1000: not each side will lose 1000, you may lose 500 out of 5000. Consequence: you NEED stacked combat. This simple addition is the ESSENCE of strategy and would change everything about combat.

vee4473

December 6, 2003, 15:01

a simple yet satisfying addition:

a slider for money amounts during negotiations. It gets old when you have to put in an amount, take it back, put in another and on and on until your little advisor says that they will probably accept it.

Sandman

December 6, 2003, 16:02

Flexible city radius

The 21-square blob doesn't cut it. Allow cities' radii to 'meld', allowing for greater freedom in city placement. If two cities have overlapping radii, they should gain extra squares elsewhere. It should be possible to cluster your cities along rivers or fertile coastlines.

Harsher environment

It should never be possible to irrigate desert or tundra EVER. Most military units that cross them should die, as should be the case with mountains and jungles. Forests and jungles should create plains when cut down. Irrigation should be curtailed.

Point to point transport links

Instead of building roads and railways in a square, build them between squares. That way, you'd get more realistic-looking networks and roads wouldn't magically fuse with others when completed.

Jon Miller

December 6, 2003, 16:23

a fight in civ3 is not a battle (nor was it in civ2 or civ)

it is a part of the battle

that is why there is tactics in civ

the whole fight takes up 4 or 6 squares

and in the whole battle (not just one part of it) there is lots of losses on both sides

what is lost is just brigades and the like

Jon Miller

Solver

December 6, 2003, 16:27

Yeah, but civ 3 fights are individual. Come on, haven't you seen a single defender in Civ 3 wipe out a ton of attackers? As said... a good modern invasion strat. Put a mech inf on enemy mountains, and wait for the AI to lose a dozen tanks to it.

Brent

December 6, 2003, 16:38

Influences from other games

Make sure to be influenced about equally by Civ1, Civ2, Col, SMAC, maybe CtP, GalCiv.

Civilizations

Include in the original Civ4 release at least 50 civs. Be influenced in which ones by Col and maybe CtP. Use all Civs from Civ2 and Civ3. Add Ethiopians, Olmec, Cherokee to name a few.

Culture Groups

Europe, Africa, Middle East, Far East, America, Miscellaneous, Fantasy. Balance as much as possible. Have unique units to be shared within a Culture Group in addition to specific to individual Civs.

System Requirements

My dream would be no higher than those of Civ3.

Civilization Traits

Individualize Civs more than in Civ3. More than in SMAC. Give 10 choices for Agricultural, Seafaring type characteristics. Give two levels of each. Each Civ could choose three points of these characteristics, either three separate choices, or two points for one and one point for another. Give Civs different personalities. Give more starting techs.

Graphics

We don't need no stinking animations. Units don't need to be animated. Appease any who might think the Civ3 animations constitute too much violence. Leaders don't need to be animated. Save the space to have other choices for leader. On the other hand, bringing back wonder movies would be nice, and not CG. The Civ2 High Council was good. Do something better than the other leaders comments for ending the game.

Leaders

No animation. 3 choices for many civs, 2 male and 1 female. Personality traits.

Scenarios

A dream would be for the original release to come with as many as in MGE. Allow for as much variety, including SciFi and Fantasy. Include Biblical scenarios, unless some religious types would complain too much or something.

Terrain

go back toward SMAC. have certain characteristics like elevation, ruggedness, trees, grass, rocks, sand, moisture, temparature. Treat north and south poles as in Civ2. Include fungus terrain characteristic in editor.

Editor

Don't require special graphics or text. Have a graphical screen for techs, be able to drag and drop techs. Have a debugger for tech trees. On the whole make editor more intuitive.

Units

Build and customize units as in SMAC. Choose number of humans, choose vehicles, animals, weapons, tools. Allow for settler parties as small as 500. Allow interesting possibilities for nomads without building cities neccessarily.

Cities

Allow for towns with populations as small as 500. Give smaller towns fewer build options. Allow small scale migration between friendly cities, don't require sending entire settlers from city to city. As mentioned, use actual population numbers like 271,894. Let Cities grow and shrink automatically based on attractions and lack thereof.

Time

Go at least to 2500, and have real future techs.

Technology

Increase number of techs.

spy14

December 6, 2003, 17:28

Combat: CTP style. Perhaps some basic (and optional)terrain use options?

Diplomacy: Permanent alliances, interfering in external wars etc etc

Graphics: CTP/Civ 3 style is fine. We need gameplay not looks.

Public works similar to CTP2?

Civ2 style spies

Civ3 style borders. Only have the AI respect them.

Sensible World of Soccer (yes, the original!) bundled with the game as a nice side touch (ok licences need to be purchased, needs to work on modern machines, im probably just dreaming...)

More to come!

MrFun

December 6, 2003, 17:31

Originally posted by Solver
Did you see the word standard in my post? While you can play with 24 civs in Civ 3, 8 is the standard, for speed and interface reasons.

Oh -- well yeah, if you have a krappy computer, I suppose you would be stuck with playing with only eight in the standard game. :p

Theben

December 6, 2003, 17:41

One thing that disappointed me in civ3 was the lack of trade routes and cities. There was one game where Shanghai was sitting on an isthamus- with 4-5 trade routes going around it! they should've gone thru the city, and the city should've gotten some bonus from it.
Anyway, I'd like to see other nation's trade routes go thru cities, and have some sort of degradation over distance involved. That way you have a choice of whether to go the long way, and not benefit as much, or thru the other civ, and get some more but leave a little with them.

Plus allow allied units to move and stack together/thru each other ala SMAC.

Trifna

December 6, 2003, 17:41

just an update (bold part):

CITY IMPROVEMENTS
When a city gets about like New York, it can produce wheat in asphalt. So perhaps the graphics around should change from plains to little buildings being part of New York. Thus, you would need to give a basic orientation to your aagglomerations. Some would be more towards industry, others towards agriculture or else. Improvements should give an orientation to production, city growth, etc. The population from cities where growth is more limited should migrate where development is higher. The more the developement is high, the more the global population of the civilization should go there.

This would also be more immersive by bringing something really like real cities that all have their own characteristic, living in New York not being like in more agricultural regions. It also brings a macro aspect (and organization) to the game instead of just an accumulation of cities where :)

Theben

December 6, 2003, 18:05

There are also a few leftovers from the 1st List I'd like to see.
Have to dig it up to remember what they were. :)

Jon Miller

December 6, 2003, 18:14

Originally posted by Brent
Influences from other games

Make sure to be influenced about equally by Civ1, Civ2, Col, SMAC, maybe CtP, GalCiv.

Civilizations

Include in the original Civ4 release at least 50 civs. Be influenced in which ones by Col and maybe CtP. Use all Civs from Civ2 and Civ3. Add Ethiopians, Olmec, Cherokee to name a few.

Culture Groups

Europe, Africa, Middle East, Far East, America, Miscellaneous, Fantasy. Balance as much as possible. Have unique units to be shared within a Culture Group in addition to specific to individual Civs.

System Requirements

My dream would be no higher than those of Civ3.

Civilization Traits

Individualize Civs more than in Civ3. More than in SMAC. Give 10 choices for Agricultural, Seafaring type characteristics. Give two levels of each. Each Civ could choose three points of these characteristics, either three separate choices, or two points for one and one point for another. Give Civs different personalities. Give more starting techs.

Graphics

We don't need no stinking animations. Units don't need to be animated. Appease any who might think the Civ3 animations constitute too much violence. Leaders don't need to be animated. Save the space to have other choices for leader. On the other hand, bringing back wonder movies would be nice, and not CG. The Civ2 High Council was good. Do something better than the other leaders comments for ending the game.

Leaders

No animation. 3 choices for many civs, 2 male and 1 female. Personality traits.

Scenarios

A dream would be for the original release to come with as many as in MGE. Allow for as much variety, including SciFi and Fantasy. Include Biblical scenarios, unless some religious types would complain too much or something.

Terrain

go back toward SMAC. have certain characteristics like elevation, ruggedness, trees, grass, rocks, sand, moisture, temparature. Treat north and south poles as in Civ2. Include fungus terrain characteristic in editor.

Editor

Don't require special graphics or text. Have a graphical screen for techs, be able to drag and drop techs. Have a debugger for tech trees. On the whole make editor more intuitive.

Units

Build and customize units as in SMAC. Choose number of humans, choose vehicles, animals, weapons, tools. Allow for settler parties as small as 500. Allow interesting possibilities for nomads without building cities neccessarily.

Cities

Allow for towns with populations as small as 500. Give smaller towns fewer build options. Allow small scale migration between friendly cities, don't require sending entire settlers from city to city. As mentioned, use actual population numbers like 271,894. Let Cities grow and shrink automatically based on attractions and lack thereof.

Time

Go at least to 2500, and have real future techs.

Technology

Increase number of techs.

I disagree with almost all of these

JOn Miller

Fosse

December 6, 2003, 18:20

Divorce growth and food supplies

Let growth be a factor of previous population, city and civ health, the time period, immigration and emmigration, commerce in the city, and other possible factors.

So the city grows, and now the ruler has to make sure that there is enough food.

There is a possible micromanagement problem, and my solution is to make city commerce and industry weigh heavily in the growth factor, so that the cities you are most likely to have food troubles in are the ones you'd be paying close attention to anyhow.

And also to...

Use More Nation Wide Resources
Federalizing unit support was great. Now, let's have Civ automatically spread out the food supply based on which cities need it and which have it. Food can travel farther according to technology levels, and the type of economy the player has can carry with it various impacts.

Perhaps in a free market each "unit" of food moved from one city to another generates a "unit" of tax currency for the player. And the wealthy cities will buy extra food (food over the amount needed to keep people alive makes them happy), causing the poorer cities to starve. Solution to this: Planned Economy! In which everyone gets as close to the optimal amount of food as possible.

Rework those Resources
No more on or off resources. If I discover one tile of oil in my land, I should know that I am going to generate 10 barrels per turn. That means I can keep 10 tanks running, or 10 oil plants, or five of one, two of the other, and three to trade. The numbers, of course, are to be tinkered with.

Spherical Map
It's just better... computers are good enough now.

edited format.

Jon Miller

December 6, 2003, 18:21

first, a ha ha ha to Tass, I have been playing Civ since the first one first came out, and have enjoyed evreyone

I just am against ideas which I feel would ruin the game

anywys, newest idea

make it so that units defense goes down based upon number of times they are attacked in aturn

most units can only attack like once (for reasons of fatigue)

we should have this effect be for defensive units also, even if they don't lose at all

so first battle at 100%
next at 90%
next at 80%
next at 60%
next at 50%
next at 50%
next at 40%
and all remaining ones at 30%

Jon Miller

Jon Miller

December 6, 2003, 18:25

make it so that food can be exchanged between cities with a road

and shields with a railroad

this is probably a huge change and hard to implement, but it sounds cool

here is an idea on implementatino

first have it go through and make sure that all cities are getting fed

next make it so that there can be a choice when you are building (like hurry) but is emphasize production

what this chioce would do is steal 1 production from all cities connected by a rail road to that city and give it to that city for the duration of the contruction (you would also need to make it so that there is a penalty, like 30% of the shields gotten this way are lost)

Jon Miller

Fosse

December 6, 2003, 18:26

I think that the combat should be stacks. The one unit at a time system is too tedious and outmoded, especially as we can expect bigger maps, more civs, more cities (at least, we'd BETTER get that ;) ).

CtP style fighting and movement (maybe we should call it something else, so Firaxis might consider it. :cute: ) is the better way to go.

Besides, Civilization is, and should be, a STRATEGY game. Not a tactical one.

Leave tactics to the generals, and I'll take care of the generals.

edited for typo

Fosse

December 6, 2003, 18:32

Originally posted by Jon Miller
next make it so that there can be a choice when you are building (like hurry) but is emphasize production

what this chioce would do is steal 1 production from all cities connected by a rail road to that city and give it to that city for the duration of the contruction (you would also need to make it so that there is a penalty, like 30% of the shields gotten this way are lost)

Jon, this might be the first thing I agree with you on! :D

I like this as a way to build wonders. I'd like to see it such that it's really the only good way to build wonders, so that if you're really going to build the pyramids then you have to really commit to building those pyramids.

Perhaps this could be the only way to "hurry" anything though, and there could be a gold cost associated with each shield moved. Instead of having those purchased shields simply appear out of nowhere.

Anyhow, it's a damn sight better than the caravan flash build!

Brent

December 6, 2003, 18:35

Trade

Possibly have more than one type of trade. I miss the Caravans from Civ2, I like Col trade, and I like Civ3 trade.

Great Leaders

I like the Continental Congress (or whatever Col called it). Maybe it would be redundant to have this along with Wonders, but maybe not.

Truly Single Player

Make it more interesting to play with no AI or human opponents. Let the game end better when you don't have them. Allow appropriate victory conditions, such as culture, land domination, and space, and make them still be challenging. You could play either only Barbarian opponents, or not even them.

Goodies

Be able to set which Goody results you can get, and how frequently.

Difficulty Levels

Have ten levels of difficulty. Be able to set different categories of difficulty: My build price multiplier, Enemy build price modifier, Barbarian level, Enemy aggression, Goody results, Terrain, Unit strength multipliers, Enemy intelligence. Have ten levels for each.

Setup

Be able to specify in varying levels of precision the terrain. Be able to give percentages of specific terrain types. Be able to not know how many opponents you have until you meet them. Let the minimap begin covering a small area that grows as you explore so if you don't want to you won't know how big the world is. Make sure you can still play with whatever combination of civs you want. Be able to limit the random selection of civs. Be able to specify some civs to choose from and some not to allow.

Maps

Let maps and scenarios work more like in Civ2. Be able to mix and match rules sets with maps. Keep the ability to specify custom rules, civs and city names on a random map. Include premade maps of The Americas, North America, South America, MesoAmerica, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, The Old World, and the whole world. Offer the whole world in five sizes. Include Chiron, both with SMAC terrains and earth terrains.

Terrain- Specific Civs

Let some Civs be more suited to specific terrain types, such as mountains, arctic, desert, forest, and islands.

Civ 1

Include Civ 1 with the game, in a form that can easily be run by modern computers.

Wonders

Keep the two kinds of wonders like in Civ3. When a city wants to build a wonder, it should automatically ask you which one it wants, maybe in a big window reminding you of the effects of each.

Terrain Improvements

Be able to build Walls, such as The Great Wall of China and Hadrian's Wall, which have an effect without the involvement of units. Be able to build Canals.

Zones of Control

Return to Civ2. At least notify you when a rival unit enters your territory.

Cheating

Allow cheating like in Civ2, but do not put cheated games in the hall of fame.

Hall of Fame

Have separate halls of fame for some scenarios.

The list of Ideas for Firaxis

Why do we have to start with all wishlist topics in the same thread?

Trifna

December 6, 2003, 19:02

BORDERS

This is crucial and perhaps easy to implement:
A distinction between CULTURAL border and PHYSICAL border. It's not the same thing and while happiness can go down when a city is more attached to another culture, it doesn't mean it can't be countered, nor is the physical border itself dependant on culture.

MISCELLANEOUS/OTHER

It may just be useful to many humans on this planet: some anti-addiction mecanism you can toggle on/off. The best I know: you put a timer that can't be changed once toggled on (except by going out of the game and back), and it only lets you finish your turn once the time's off.

MrFun

December 6, 2003, 22:46

I'm curious -- has anyone else ever argued for migration concepts similar to what I proposed??

Trifna

December 6, 2003, 23:19

MrFun: I never heard of your concept... Would you be kind enough to make a new thread about it? To me, it should simply be in function of where there are new jobs, thus city growth (industry...). It should all be done automatically.

Oncle Boris

December 6, 2003, 23:38

*Short* Wish list:

1. Order phase + Resolution Phase
A system à la board game Diplomacy, in which everyone issues orders simultaneously, which are then compared and resolved. This would allow for combined forces, and some interesting strategy twists: for example, someone who has achieved superiority in military doctrines could be allowed to change his orders during the resolution phase, thus simulating his superior maneuvrability and tactics. I'm thinking about Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Rommel, and the likes.
This would also makle MP much more enjoyable.

2. Give some use to naval power
Instead of useless and agonizingly slow ships who take centuries to circumnavigate the world, you build navies that are docked in. Each turn, you can assign them a mission, such as escorting merchant ships, conducting an amphibious invasion, blockading an enemy port, or exploring (the list is obviously not restrictive).

3. Social engineering!!!
What was a brilliant innovation in AC has been forgotten in Civ3. They could even create a "social simulation", in which, instead of having the leader choose for his people, your nation evolves with your decisions. If you're a warmonger, your people is going to like war; if you build universities, they'll tend to want a democracy; if you don't, they are more likely to support a fundamentalist state. If your country is rich, with banks and stock exchanges, citizens will support a free market economy; and so on.
Instead of being an absolute thing, happiness would be calculated by comparing your people's desires with your own politics.

4. Fix culture!
Culture is a brilliant idea, but it was flawed in its implementation. Instead of being an absolute number, it should be a yearly production that compares with other countries. The basis number would be 0; if you are above average, your value will be more than 0, while if you are under average your cultural worth will be negative.
This way, we can avoid successful nations in the ancient age dominating for the rest of the game.
I mean, hieroglyphs were nice in the third millenium BC, Greek was neat at the time of Plato, French was à la mode and refined in the 19th century; but it took at most 75 years for English to overcome French as the most widespread international language. No culture has ever achieved the kind of perpetual supremacy that is possible in Civ3.
Wonders and cathedrals should produce lots of culture when they are built, and their influence should gradually decrease with time, not increase.

With a system like this, we could also link social engineering and culture. At any given time, values and morales supported by the most influential culture would slowly affect the views of other nations. This cultural intoxication would increase with the discovery of cinema, radio, TV, and computers. Dictatorships could also impose a cultural embargo against any nation... From now on, though, I'm leaving the rest to the game designers. The possibilities are endless.

5. Trade!
Trade is another feature that was improved in AC but went backwards in Civ3. It should naturally increase with bordering nations with whom you are at peace. If you invest in a navy and build docks, it should also increase with other maritime nations. It should also benefit from railroad and road connections, and from some technologies: currency, trade, navigation, economics, the corporation, market globalization, etc.
Again, trade would come into play with culture: nations who trade together gradually share their culture and their values.
Custom fees, embargos, free trade agreements would be part of diplomacy.

6. Science
Civ3 introduced a great idea with scientific research: the more nations know about something, the easier it is to research it. This concept sould be further expanded. Research is conducted automatically, and again based on social engineering. Warmongering nations give priority to military techs, peaceful ones give priority to civil ones.
Free-thinking nations research faster.
The government could conduct research itself on some high-profile projects, such as a space program, nuclear weapons, dreadnoughts (like in WW1), stealth aircraft.
Countries who trade together also exchange techs.

7. Politics, diplomacy, spying and others
Spying needs a huge rehaul. The importance of the Secret Services to stage coups in minor nations or create evidence in order to get population support should not be underestimated. Uprisings should be frequent. Keeping your throne is a challenge!
Governments should be different in their inner functions. Dictatorships can use the ressources of the nation as they see fit, without care for the people (as long as the soldiers are well paid!), but at the expense of trade, free-thinking, and efficiency. Democracies produce more ressources, but they can't be directly allocated by the leader.

Democracy does NOT bring wealth; wealth brings the need for greater social justice, and thus, unions and human rights. As Ford understood, it is in everyone's interest that the workers can afford to buy what they produce.

I can also imagine a new kind of victory: the Perfect Government. Either a perfect, unbreakable Big Brother-esque dictatorship, in which everyone has to share the same morals, or a perfect, unbreakable cyber-democracy defended by Robocops that force everyone to share the same morals. Either could be similar to the "material perfection state" described by Marx.

Ok, I've told enough. Whaddya think of my ideas?

Fosse

December 7, 2003, 00:39

Oncle:

1 - Order/resolution phases. I'm a big fan of this one, though I don't see the need for player/Ai intervention to simulate great generals. Just combat bonuses.

2 - YES to more necessary navy. I don't know if I like your way of doing it, but your heart is sure in the right place! I'd like to control of the seas in your trading waters be a prerequisite for sea trade. If you or your allies/trading partners have a strong enough prescence in the region your trade goes through, all is well. If not, expect piracy. If the enemy does, kiss those merchant marines goodbye.

3) Yes to social engeineering, though the name would have to chagne. Your idea of the people having an ideal setup is interesting. What about political parties like in GalCiv? Even in nonrepresentative governments you could have the miliatry, the church, the academics, etc with their ideal way to run things, and they could have various influeces. Clash of Civlizations, anyone?

4) You're spot on about culture. I like this approach.

5) AC trade was good for being realistic and easy, bad for being something so easily ignored. I'm a supporter of that system though, just with more player input (tarriffs, deals, piracy, etc). And with a seperat system for Civ 3 type trades of resources, units, and the like.

6) I don't know how I feel about that.

7) Espionage certainly needs a revamp.

I agree 100% that different government types should have bigger differences "under the hood." As it is now, different goverments are just filters for where your gold goes and how it gets there.

I'm not a big fan of th perfect government win... it depends too much on fantasy future tech and not enough on anything concrete.

Oncle Boris

December 7, 2003, 02:45

Originally posted by Fosse
Oncle:

2 - YES to more necessary navy. I don't know if I like your way of doing it, but your heart is sure in the right place! I'd like to control of the seas in your trading waters be a prerequisite for sea trade. If you or your allies/trading partners have a strong enough prescence in the region your trade goes through, all is well. If not, expect piracy. If the enemy does, kiss those merchant marines goodbye.

How do you propose it is done though?

Personally I got this idea from playing Avalon Hill Wargames, in which fleets have an (almost) unlimited range, and usually it works well. I just HATE wargames (and games) where ships are "land units with a few more movement points".
Solving the fleet problem would be great to the civ experience.

Brent

December 7, 2003, 03:37

Improvements

Be able to build more than one of the same type of building in the same city. Let improvements look different for different culture groups, or allow a choice, for such as temples.

Trade

I never payed much attention to trade in SMAC, I think I like it better in Civ2, Civ3 and Col

Feats of Wonder

Like I heard about in CtP2. Different degrees. Circumnavigation of landmasses and the world. Exploring entire landmasses, water bodies, and the world. Building a terrain improvement wall a certain length.

Borders

Let borders be affected by the terrain.

Countryside

Let people live where there aren't cities. Maybe say there are small towns there but don't show them or anything.

Science

Let civs take widely different directions. Let civs focus on agriculture at the expense of industry.

Seasons

In scenarios with turns covering less than a year, let snow spread and shrink. Let vegetation thrive some of the time and not other times. Let squares increase and decrease in moisture and temperature.

SMAC

Have some of the same random events as in SMAC. Have random tidal waves, either with no goody box or let there be goody ships in the waters. Have heat waves and such.

Governments

Fix fundamentalism and bring it back. Have more options.

Automation

Make all units automatable as in SMAC. Let units look for new cities built by others when they've explored everything.

Governors

Let governors be more precise. Have more pages of Governor options. Have a list of wonders you want and don't want, and want more and want less. Be able to specify Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Often, and Exclusively. Be able to specify options to apply to a particular border, a certain number of cities closest to your capital, on coasts, on all islands.

Complexity

Make the game more complex than SMAC.

Political Parties

Have various government officials who come in and out of power. Be able to appoint government officials from several choices.

Skanky Burns

December 7, 2003, 05:00

Population points in your cities are of a certain nationality and can be assimilated.
This would be similar to colonization or MoO2 or indeeed Civ 3, where each population point would identify with a certain nation. Over time they would be assimilated by whoever controls the city they live in. Unlike Civ 3 though, these people once assimilated would be of your nation, not Japanese-American or Russian-American but just plain American (for example).

People on borders between civilizations would be influenced by the foreign culture, if enough of the population identifies with another nation then there is a chance for culture flipping. This could be combatted by military garrison, the higher number of foreign civilians, the higher number of military required to prevent any chance of culture flipping.

Solver

December 7, 2003, 07:28

Originally posted by Brent
Complexity

Make the game more complex than SMAC.

Complexity is an excellet thing. But, being the best thing about SMAC, it also was the worst thing about it - the game was so complex that the AI had no chance of keeping up. If Civ 4 is to be more complex than SMAC, then I fear the AI will be back to pre-Civ3 standards.

Solver

December 7, 2003, 08:42

Flexible Movement Rates

Movement rates should change depending on map size. Suppose, in Civ 3 on standard map, your ships can reach the enemy in 3 turns. Makes sense, more or less. But, on a huge water map, it might take you 8 turns just for the invasion force to reach the enemy landmass, which is ridicilous.

Same applies for aircraft - a Bomber with the range of 8 is simply non-serious for Huge maps.

Solution: add a map size factor to Civ 4 when getting the movement points of aircraft/naval units.

Colonel E

December 7, 2003, 14:19

What about something like the Ethos system from (the old design of) MOO3?

For workers, how about simply getting "work points" which you can distribute around to get work done instead of having actual units?

Solver

December 7, 2003, 14:27

For workers, how about simply getting "work points" which you can distribute around to get work done instead of having actual units?

That's exactly like CtP Public Works :b:.

FrostyBoy

December 7, 2003, 17:29

It will be very difficult for Firaxis to use most of these ideas, because imagine trying to use all of these ideas together in one game, it would seem like an impossible task.

I'm sure they will look at the ideas, but ultimately they will only pay attention to the ideas they can implement with what they already have.

What you should be doing this time round is trying to merge your ideas with each other's, try to come up with a funtional and basic Civ4, something that Firaxis could actually use and trust will work.

Asmodean

December 7, 2003, 19:27

I see what you mean, Sn00py, but that would mean creating a design document that we can all agree on - truly a daunting task.

If we make a list of suggestions, all can participate, noone get left out, and Firaxis can pick and choose what they like, and feel they can fit into the project.

Asmodean

Trifna

December 7, 2003, 19:41

Asmodean, Snoopy, People of the Jury,

I think this IS achievable by one way.
Instead of aiming to get something with what EVERYONE agrees, we simply make a document grouped perhaps in a few classes of ideas:
1- Green/Primary/***
2- Yellow/Sedundary/***
3- ...

Or put some colors on them if you prefer. Anyway, the goal would be to use polls to arrange this problem by knowing what is wanted BADLY, what is seen as trivial, what is just "something considered normal to see it in Civ IV", etc. This would of course necessitate a globally ORGANIZED set of polls with neutral questions.

Jon Miller

December 7, 2003, 20:05

I think that we should make suggestions and say what we think we woudl like

no more

we shouldn't set out to design a game

they are the ones who know what they are capable of, and are the ones being paid to design the game (As well know a lot more about what is actual good gaming for everyone than a few of the poeple here)

as such we should just pass on suggestions of improvements that someone here thinks is a good idea

they can look at the list of improvments, and judge them for being good themselves

that shouldn't be our place

as such this should be a list of ideas, we are not trying to make a game here

Jon Miller

DrGerry

December 7, 2003, 20:44

I have opened a thread in the Spanish forum to work in a list like this. Probably we will post here a summary at its moment.

We had already made a list several months ago and we are going to depurate it in the first place. :b:

Kuciwalker

December 7, 2003, 21:05

A simple request - events at least as powerful as in Civ2. That could go under several categories, like CUSTOMIZATION, RADICAL IDEAS (I'd prefer not :)), SCENARIO/MAP EDITOR, SCENARIO IDEAS, or MODABILITY

Kuciwalker

December 7, 2003, 21:42

Originally posted by Solver
Flexible Movement Rates

Movement rates should change depending on map size. Suppose, in Civ 3 on standard map, your ships can reach the enemy in 3 turns. Makes sense, more or less. But, on a huge water map, it might take you 8 turns just for the invasion force to reach the enemy landmass, which is ridicilous.

Same applies for aircraft - a Bomber with the range of 8 is simply non-serious for Huge maps.

Solution: add a map size factor to Civ 4 when getting the movement points of aircraft/naval units.

I think, however, that it shouldn't be in direct proportion. Part of the reason you PLAY large maps is so that the distances are larger. So make it like, Small moves at .75x, Normal at 1x, Large at 1.25x, and Huge at 1.5x (you get the idea). So, even though Huge is, say, twice as large as Normal, it only has 50% extra movement rate.

Brent

December 8, 2003, 03:03

Points for Exploration

Maybe this should be separate from wonders. One point for some number of squares for a landmass or water body. One point for each square for circumnavigating a landmass. A fixed number of points for circumnavigating the world and for exploring every square in the world.

Something like the above is a high priority for me.

Findable Features

SMAC did some things that I didn't know about for a while, probably some things I still don't know about.

Thie above is a low priority for me

Be Able to Do Things in Cities

Be able to search for a person or thing within a city. Have units that can wander the streets within a city. Be able to control battles within a city.

The above is a low priority for me.

Aircraft

I don't like aircraft in the game, at least not the way they worked in Civ2 (I have not used them in Civ3 so far). One option I would like would be for the game to end before the advent of aircraft. I liked Locusts of Chiron in SMAC, but not any other aircraft. I guess my "anti- aircraft" policy would work with just limiting the game eras, does Civ3 do that?

The above is a low to moderate priority for me.

Notes

Should we go back and indicate our levels of priority in our previous posts? Or did Trifna only mean coming to a concensus of priorities?

Cutting and Pasting Maps

I want to be able to cut a piece out of a large world map to create a smaller map of a smaller part of the world. I want to be able to increase the size of maps, like each original square becomes four squares, either all four exactly the same, or do something random.

The above is a high priority for me.

Languages

Should civs have trouble understanding each other at first? I would guess not.

The above is a low priority for me.

Playing Perpetual Nomads

I would like to be able to play the whole game wandering without building cities. I would like a wandering unsettled group to be able to increase in population and create military units.

The above is a moderate to high priority for me.

problem_child

December 8, 2003, 08:10

My wishlist for Civ4 is simple, everything that Civ2, Civ3+PTW and SMACX had should be present, that means guerillas, partisans, the ability to negotiate commodities and resources, the ability to design new units, the ability to stack your units with other nations and base units in their cities, the ability to maintain protectorates and hegemonies, a more interesting espionage aspect, the ability to negotiate mining rights and pursue a rich and deep range of economic warfare strategems, and that the player this time represents a power ionside a nation that must compete not just with rival nations, but rival powers, thus allowing for civil-wars and powerstruggles within borders and all the interesting meta-games that that entails (like supporting rebel groups in other nations...) And religions and political theories should be significant, not just in a players nations, but in deciding who the enemy is (eg islam vs christianity, or capitalism vs communism).

There, I said it.

Solver

December 8, 2003, 10:32

You can't get everyone to agree on even the simplest concepts. You can't get everyone to agree on units vs. stacks cobat. I'll never agree to tech research model changes (such as SMAC blind research). Others will never agree on future age. Etc.

The List is supposed to be a list of ideas, for Firaxis to review, and choose the best - and see what most people want. Like it was with Civ 3.

Skanky Burns

December 8, 2003, 11:01

Tunnels and bridges.

Well, someone was going to mention them sooner or later. :D

Brent

December 8, 2003, 13:08

Enlarging, Shrinking Maps

Be able to shrink a map, but how do you decide which terrain to keep?

The above is a low priority for me.

Scenarios

Vikings, with enjoyably playable Skraelings, separate Viking tribes, playable Europeans to defend themselves. Israelites settling Canaan, each tribe a separate civ but with a locked alliance. American Civil War or something with Yankees, Confederates, and Mormons if using Mormons wouldn't cause any problems. Possibly a race to explore every square should be a scenario. A scenario based on the separate Colonization game.

These scenarios are moderate to high priorities for me.

Playing Perpetual Nomads

Playable nomads should be able to build ships. Playable nomads should be a possibility, but should be able to build cities if they want. You can have some cities and also have nomads that can do the things I want.

The above is a high priority for me.

Waterless Maps

I want to be able to play on a landlocked map, but maybe this can be accomplished with impassable terrain.

The above is a moderate to high priority for me.

Ships

I want ships to work more like in Civ2, be able to attack the way they did in Civ2.

The above is a low priority for me.

Transports

Go along with being able to specify the number of human beings in a unit. Settlers should have to be small numbers to board a transport, but we can be a bit unrealistic, I guess one transport unit can be more than one ship.

The above is a low priority for me.

Palace

Definately a Palace instead of a throne room. Plenty of alternative choices. If a throne room, give alternative choices.

The above is a low priority for me.

Modes

Have modes to make the game more like previous installments in individual ways. City Radii. Civ2 style civilization traits. Graphics. Diplomacy. Trade?

The above is a moderate to high priority for me.

Internal Cultural Variation

Let regions within an Empire develop their own cultural variations. Based on different landmasses, proximity to other civs, separation by isthmuses, or each city have its own cultural distinctiveness. Settlers give cities they build similar culture to city that built the settler. Possibility of regional differences rebelling to establish independence or join rival civ. Things to do to keep regions happy, keep them under control. Based on real groups or not. "Colonies" differ between each other more than homeland, differences increase with distance from capital.

The above is a high priority for me.

Diplomacy

More options early in the game.

The above is a low to moderate priority for me.

lord of the mark

December 8, 2003, 14:24

Im not sure i can even contribute, since i still dont have Civ3, and I have issues with the whole civ sub genre at this point, so I'll just a list a few pet issues.

Scenario desigin
one of the best things about Civ2 was the huge (and still lively) scenario building community. A Scenario editior with full scenario building tools, including events, complex triggers, etc seems to be a requirement,I think.

Trade
Bring back the Camel:D Seriously, the delivery of individual caravans, the dangers accomanying them, the use of caravans for exploration and making contact, was historically important. I realize that delivering large numbers of caravans got tedious in the late game, and that Civ3 seems to have done ok without camels, but is there not seem to work this in? Perhaps use camels, then trade routes after a give tech level achieved? While Civ3 abstracted this, Im not sure i want a game where combat is completely granular and other aspects of civ building are largely abstract (but then we're getting into my issues with the whole subgenre)

Civ specific traits
Well as some here may recall, i opposed that on historical and philosophical grounds. I havent been enough part of the Civ3 community to see if it has had the negative impacts on the community i feared - I do like the ideas for generating traits through Civ experiences.

Brent

December 8, 2003, 16:09

Trailblazing

Units tend to follow paths already travelled. Over time roads automatically appear along these paths.

The above is a moderate to high priority for me.

City Names

The game should come with many more. Some Civs might have enough, but some civs should have at least three times as many. When you build a city, there should be a drop down box listing the built in names to choose from, with the option to enter one not listed. Names chosen by the computer should depend on terrain and location. Have names tagged for compass direction from capital, or center of landmass or empire or unclaimed territory. Tag names for coastal areas, mountains, forests, and nearby rival Civs. Tag names for proximity to capital, and have map size and potential growth affect tags, on a large map with other civs far away have a tag for the first few cities and the ones nearest to the capital. Have tags for home landmass and overseas.

The above is a high priority for me.

Startup Options

Be able to create an original civ as part of startup. Be able to choose ruler name, civ name, and civ attributes.

The above is a moderate priority for me.

Espionage

Should be less risky than in Civ3.

The above is a low priority for me.

Technology

Advances should be affected by the units you build and use.

The above is a low to moderate priority for me.

Customize Ruler Portrait

I guess there was something like this in CivNet? But make it sort of like the palace screen, be able to choose skin color, hair color, hair style, facial hair, headware, facial shape, caricature noses from ready made options

The above is a moderate to high priority for me.

Fosse

December 8, 2003, 20:22

Brent: Absolutely on more city names! There is no excuse for EVER having a New Berlin!

I mentioned this before, but I'd just like to throw in one more reason for having two phase turns (i.e. an orders phase, then a simultaneous movement phase).

Three way battles! Or more! If you coordinate with another player to have both of your armies reach Rome in 750 AD, and they do, and there is a three way battle resolution... then that's cool as spit!

Other ideas...

More sandbox-y
Sometimes it feels to me that Civ is too much geared towards winning. But so much of history has just been about surviving, or internal affairs, or other goals. For me to be worried about being in a position to launch a spaceship 2000 years from now is a bit silly.

How to increase the Sand levels? More internal conflict. Give us more to worry about in the management of our civs. Not things like corruption or generic happieness. But what about various interests or parties to keep happy? An approval rating that matters could play into this, it'd be nice to conquer the iron supply of your neighbor, but the Church has a lot of power over the people, and they are for peace. So if you invade it might make some people mad.

Couple this with real reasons for unhappiness - instead of "I'm the second citizen in this city and we're on Emperor... I'm sad," such as lack of food sources, oppresive government... anything that makes sense. Now you have natural things to worry about in your Civilization, that if left unchecked could lead to rebellions, or rioting, or increased corruption. How about that... instead of an equation determining how corrupt a city is, have the ruling class' happiness factor in!

I'm going to cut this one here, and maybe have a more detailed approach in its own thread if people want to hear it (or if I just decide to anyhow).

What do you think about adding sand? It's a huge item on my list.

Mid Game name chagnes

This is little, but would be cool. What if whenever you change governments you get the option to rename yourself? The AI would have a Civ Name List that it would pick from in appropriate circumstances. So you might fight the Russian Democracy or the Soviet Communism. An American AI that switches to Democracy becomes the United States, and an England that manages to conquer a couple of nations starts calling itself the Commonwealth.

It's small, easy to do, takes no resources, and adds flavor.

As always, more to come...

Fosse

Provost Harrison

December 8, 2003, 20:59

It would be nice to have resources that conferred a particular national benefit - for example, perhaps 10% increased production or so on, something like that...

...and social engineering dammit :doitnow!:

Boris Godunov

December 8, 2003, 21:17

Workers: Eliminate them. Use a pool of "terrain improvement" points, or whatever, and simply designate terrain around cities to be improved. You can divide up available points between types of project, kinda like the tax screen (ie. 50% roads, 30% irrigation, 20% mines, etc). Then projects are built over time. You can also rush certain tiles for double the point cost (which would replace worker doubling).

Once you had construction, you could then have civil engineer units to build fortresses/walls (like Hadrian's wall), canals and bridges (because I think we should be able to linke any body of land/water that is separated by another body of land/water by only 1 tile with a canal/bridge as technology permits), airfields, etc.

Boris Godunov

December 8, 2003, 21:19

Trade routes: I think the GalCiv method is perfect and should be shamelessly copied. It would be awesome to have little icons for trade ships/caravans moving across the map during the game. This would lend a real feeling of a vibrant, populated world.

Brent

December 8, 2003, 21:35

Landmarks

Something like Sunny Mesa, etc in SMAC. I guess there aren't any in the real world that would span multiple squares, maybe in the game we could make them that big. Real world ones and made up ones. There could be a Grand Canyon spanning multiple squares, maybe some waterfalls each contained in one square, but I don't know about labeling them. There could be one square craters, mountain ranges, rivers, forests labelled with real names.

The above is a moderate to high priority for me.

Movies

I think I would like an opening movie similar to that of Civ1. Maybe even bring back the exact wonder movies from Civ2! I want interesting, creative victory and defeat movies.

The above is a low to moderate priority for me.

Exploration

Maybe not award any points for exploring every square of a continent etc, but have a quick movie or something for your home landmass and the whole world, maybe every landmass over a certain size. Be able to restrict automatic exploration by saying go in a particular compass direction until you reach a coast or a rival's borders, and then follow that coast. Be able to tell it to follow the first river it finds, move into mountains when you see them.

The above is a high priority for me.

Scenarios

Colonization of United States, Latin America, Africa, Asia, Oceania. Natives not too challenging to play as. US powers: Spain, England, France. Latin America powers: Spain, Portugal, Inca, Maya, Aztec. Africa powers: Arabs, English, French. Asia powers: India, England, China, Japan, Russia, Tibet, Arabia, France, Netherlands, Mongols, Turkmen, Hmong. Oceania powers: Australian Aborigines, Maori, Japan, China, Hawaiians, French, English, Americans

The above is a high priority for me.

City Names

Include Austrian and German- speaking Swiss names included for German cities. As previously suggested, let Austria and Switzerland be cultures within the German civ, with the potential to split off.

The above is a moderate priority for me.

Splintering

Give Scandinavians potential to split into separate Norwegian, Danish, Jute, Swedish, Gutnish, Icelandic, Faroese civs. Somehow have the option of Americans, Canadians, Australians, South Africans, New Zealanders splitting off from English. Mexicans, Argentines, Peruvians, etc from Spanish.

The above is a moderate priority for me.

Sound

Have excellent music as usual. Use some from Civ1, Civ2, Civ3, expansions, Colonization. We don't need a wide variety of sound effects for units.

The above is a low priority for me.

DarkCloud

December 9, 2003, 00:04

You can't get everyone to agree on even the simplest concepts. You can't get everyone to agree on units vs. stacks cobat. I'll never agree to tech research model changes (such as SMAC blind research). Others will never agree on future age. Etc.

Indeed. Solver is correct on this.

However, I still support Trifna's idea of connotating in the list differently colored ideas based upon the feasability/necessity/popularity of certain ideas based upon forum return.

We could have an explanation detailing the criteria for each color and then note aht this is only a basic rating given 'REPRESENTATIVE' of the civilization community at large!

I believe that would be both a fair and even-representation of data taht would benefit all involved.

Boris Godunov

December 9, 2003, 00:08

Reward for winning:

One of the biggest disappointments of Civ3 is that there is little reward for winning the game. A lame text box saying "YOU WIN!!!' is laughably Java-game-esque. Why no victory movie for each condition? That'd be awesome.

Also, ditch the cutesy, cartoonish leaderheads with their dumb sayings. Make it feel EPIC, like SMAC. Can we not say that enough?

DarkCloud

December 9, 2003, 00:13

It would be great if they would have a vicotyr movie like they have in Empire Earth for each win... and epic cutscenes like Empire Earth;s (like they had in Civ II)

that would be a worthy reaward for all the hours of hard work that each player puts into a game of civ! ;)

Brent

December 9, 2003, 02:32

Preset Civ Combinations

Allow players to set combinations of who they'll be and who they'll play against to save and choose from when starting a game. Include the group from Civ1, the group from Col (with or without the natives), and sets of civs that are the same color in Civ2. Have one for the PtW expansion and one for C3C.

The above is a low to moderate priority for me.

Civs

Pay attention to the Civs from the Civ2 and Civ3 scenarios in choosing civs for Civ4. Like I said, I want at least 50 Civs available in the original release. 200 would be great. 20 seems reasonable for maximum on one map.

The above is a low to moderate priority for me.

Rush Buying

Bring back sending caravans into Wonder cities. Don't flog me!

The above is a low to moderate priority for me.

Degree of Difference from Previous Games

To me, it seems like three is plenty for simply better versions of previous games. I don't know how Civ4 should break the pattern, maybe it would work to just make it a much bigger leap, and having 200 available Civs could be part of that.

The above is a low to moderate priority for me.

Trading Maps

Be able to trade maps in pieces by continent. The game could automatically name the continents. With culturally linked starting locations, the game could make sure that the civs on one continent in the real world are on the same continent in the game, and in the game the random continents could have the names of real continents.

The above is a moderate priority for me.

Ficticious Civs

Include pregenerated ficticious Civs, not elves or other fantasy, but humans. Let the game randomly create ficticious Civs.

The above is a low priority for me.

Let Settlers Defend themselves

Make noncombat units more like in Civ2.

The above is a low priority for me.

Regional Animals

For example, let horses appear only in Arabia, maybe just at first. Link regional animals with culture groups. Let specific types of animals migrate slowly over time. Let there be plagues of insects.

The above is a moderate priority for me.

Future Tech

Let some future technologies resemble SMAC techs.

The above is a low priority for me.

City Names

Add compass directions to reused city names. Maybe just on large maps when there's reason to believe you'll build many cities, when your first few cities are spread out.

The above is a low to moderate priority to me.

Three Way Battles

After rereading posts several times, Fosse's idea about two phase turns catches my attention.

The above is a moderate to high priority for me.

Guidance

I got used to Civ2 telling me where to put my cities. I guess I'm over it now. I want such guidance to be available on the higher difficulty levels.

The above is a high priority for me.

Automation

I want to be able to automate settlers to build cities in good spots without worrying about them, but I don't want those cities to automatically go on governor like in SMAC. I want automated land units and transports to work together, if they don't already.

The above is a high priority for me.

Colonization type units

I want units to be interchangable with citizens, to be given jobs within cities or elsewhere, so more like Colonization than SMAC.

The above is a moderate to high priority for me.

Donegeal

December 9, 2003, 08:34

Editor

Add worker jobs.
I like both the CtP and CivIII version of terrain improvements, but just for the sake of arguement, I will be going from the perspective of CivIII. I want to either be able to add worker jobs or already have them in. Examples: Loved the ability to Irragate a second time in CivII. Give this back. I have also be wanting a good way to deal with Urban Sprawl/Suburbs. Currently, for astetic reasons, I use the Urban Sprawl graphic for rail roads. Looks good, but then you get the Urban Sprawl everywhere. I have been wanting a "Suburb" tile improvement. The graphic would be similar to a "town". Suburbs would only be allowed to be built in the inner eight squares surrounding the actual city (maybe even giving cities the ability to build naval/costal things even if they are one tile back of the coast) and only on flat terrain (Grassland, Plains, Desert). Have a suburb add one or two of each food/shield/commerce (added food to show that the city is now larger population wise, added shield to show that there is infact more than one city working to complete something, and added commerce for all the extra trade that goes on). Building a Suburb comsumes the worker.

Ok, maybe not with the "only flat tiles" deal. It doesn't matter to me so long as "Suburbia" is well represented in the modern age (just like it is in real life).

Brundlefly

December 9, 2003, 10:17

To those posting essay responses to this thread, a request: Please do not double-space. Also please be as brief and to the point as possible. Please don't post the same sentence a dozen times within the same post. Some of these posts threaten to take up an entire page. I don't know how others feel, but I rarely read more than 10 sentences of a post anyway... Often times someone is able to make a very good point in a post using about 5 sentences, but if that post gets sandwiched between a couple of essay posts it will likely go unnoticed.

TheBirdMan

December 9, 2003, 10:39

Units - bombarding from the distance.

Modern artillery which is limited by a small number of movementpoints should be able to fire from the distance.... say 1 tile behind the frontline.

Another way is to introduce a kind of missilelauncher, where it is possible to fire airborne "units" against an attacking enemy (something like the cruisemissile in the modded versions of CTP).

If we take the CTP-way to do it, the artillery-unit should look like this (only the most important values are shown):

UNIT_ARTILLERY
{
MAX_MOVEMENT 200
FUEL 0

SHIELD_HUNGER 46
FOOD_HUNGER 0

DEFAULT_SPRITE SPRITE_ARTILLERY
####### special flags ########
MOVEMENT_TYPE_LAND
LOSS_MOVE_TO_DMG_NONE
SIZE_LARGE
......................................... CAN_CARRY_SMALL_AIR
......................................... TRANSPORT_CAPACITY 5
VISIBILITY_CLASS_0
VISIBILITY_CAN_SEE_0
CAN_BOMBARD_LAND
CAN_BOMBARD_WATER
CAN_BOMBARD_MOUNTAIN
SEA_CITY_CAN_BUILD
}

and the missile like this (only the most important values are shown):

UNIT_CRUISE_MISSILE
{
SHIELD_COST 375
POWER_POINTS 500
MAX_HP 5
ATTACK 0
DEFENSE 0
FIREPOWER 4
ZB_RANGE_ATTACK 220

VISION_RANGE 1
MAX_MOVEMENT 400
FUEL 501
SHIELD_HUNGER 12
FOOD_HUNGER 0
ADVANCE_MICROCOMPUTERS
OBSOLETE_ADVANCE NULL
###### special flags ########
MOVEMENT_TYPE_AIR
NO_FUEL_THEN_CRASH
SIZE_SMALL
CAN_BEACH_ASSAULT
IGNORE_ZOC
HAS_NO_ZOC
CAN_BOMBARD_LAND
CAN_BOMBARD_WATER
CAN_BOMBARD_MOUNTAIN
SINGLE_USE
SEA_CITY_CAN_BUILD
}

FinnishGuy

December 9, 2003, 10:48

I'd like to get back the little fanfare that you heard when you changed government in Civ2. :) I miss it.

Brundlefly

December 9, 2003, 11:09

BirdMan's post is a perfect example of what I was talking about in my previous post. I'm sure the ideas in that post are valid points, but this is an idea-gathering thread not a technical discussion. 1% of the people who look at this thread will have the time and interest to sort through the script language in that post and figure what it means. The thread becomes cumbersome with huge posts like that. This is just a high level discussion people - keep it simple.

MarkG said the same damn thing on page 1 of this thread..

TheBirdMan

December 9, 2003, 11:51

:D Don't worry bfg9000. This is the first time I visited this thread - but not the last time.

:eager: I will arrange my future posts with a header for the quick guys and (maybe) a little more detailed part for those who wants that (people like myself ;) ).

ixnay

December 9, 2003, 13:10

DarkCloud

December 9, 2003, 13:43

I'd like to see the city view screen become a little more useful and have it a la Civ1: Showing animations in the city screen when they drop into revolt, build an improvement, get conquered, etc.

As much as this would slow the flow of the game down I'd still watch it.
But would you watch it after the 10th time the revolts occured? the animations, since they would be useless and hidden in the interface, would quickly lose their flavor...

KorvaKikkeli

December 9, 2003, 13:59

I really hope they make the AI stop treating the player differently from the other civs. It's the only thing that really bothered me in Civ3. It can't be that hard to code a proper AI, hire better programmers if you can't do it :) They did it in Galactic Civilizations (granted, it's a different game). For me it really breaks the mood of the game when you notice that the AI-civs gradually start giving you crappier deals even if it would hurt them more. And for no apparent reason. Theoretically, in the deity level, it shouldn't be too hard to code the AI to make "best possible" moves and give them a long term plan according to their civilization characteristics.

Another minor point is that the small minimap should really center itself according to cursor location on the big map. I don't know if it's fixed in the newer installments.

KorvaKikkeli

December 9, 2003, 15:51

Some other thoughts, that I forgot from the previous mail:
I think something that would really make the whole gaming experience better is better focus on different details on different civilizations and better research on other subjects besides the obvious history and military units. For example, the graphics could be different on cities, advisors and other units even if they have the same stats. Also if Firaxis comes up with some other ideas or concepts for the sequel, all those could be more civ-specific. With Civ3 I don't really feel much different whether I'm playing Aztecs or Germans.

TheBirdMan

December 9, 2003, 16:01

I have 4 high priorities.

The AI should be able to handle every concept of the game with a decent skill.

PBEM is a must from the start.

MP is a must too (though I am not playing MP (on-line)).

Firaxis should back up the game for at least a year (make nessesary patches).

Dknight

December 9, 2003, 16:07

International Conferences

I really liked how diplomacy was implenmented in Alpha Centuari, it actually feel like you have to do with other nations. What I suggest is to have a system of Conferences where you can deal with more than one nation in an international event such as the brink of war, or there being a middle man to stop a war. Alliances could also be made at Conferences so you're not only helping out specific nation but starting a group.

Planning for Wars with Allies

From the Alpha Centuari train of thought again, I really like how you cooperate with your ally when fighting an enemy. But I hope Civ 4 could improve on it, but "carving" out the enemy before the war begin, or making certain cities yours and telling the computer NOT to take that city because it's agreed upon before hand. Or if taken have to give it to you when the war ends for you. So it'll help shape the world after the war is finished and not like the pockets of cities we have after a war in Civ 3.

Brent

December 9, 2003, 16:07

Should I post separate ideas in separate posts? I'm just trying not to increase my post count more than I have to. Am I posting too many ideas? Should I only post those that I give a high priority? Or do others tend to agree more with the ideas that I give a low priority? I wasn't posting the exact same sentence over and over, I was giving my priorites, each sentence was specific to the previous idea. Your point is still valid, however. I guess from now on I will instead type one to five asterisks, or should I not say what my priorities are? Should I wait until we have separate threads before posting more ideas, and would it be more acceptable on separate threads to post at the rate I have been?

The diplomat

December 9, 2003, 16:47

Originally posted by Dknight
International Conferences

I really liked how diplomacy was implenmented in Alpha Centuari, it actually feel like you have to do with other nations. What I suggest is to have a system of Conferences where you can deal with more than one nation in an international event such as the brink of war, or there being a middle man to stop a war. Alliances could also be made at Conferences so you're not only helping out specific nation but starting a group.

Planning for Wars with Allies

From the Alpha Centuari train of thought again, I really like how you cooperate with your ally when fighting an enemy. But I hope Civ 4 could improve on it, but "carving" out the enemy before the war begin, or making certain cities yours and telling the computer NOT to take that city because it's agreed upon before hand. Or if taken have to give it to you when the war ends for you. So it'll help shape the world after the war is finished and not like the pockets of cities we have after a war in Civ 3.

Civ4 should definitely allow civs who are allied to declare war and make peace as a group. I hate it when my AI ally asks me to declare war on his enemy so I do, being the loyal ally that I am, only to have the AI sue for peace the very next turn leaving me to fight the war by myself.

Solver

December 9, 2003, 17:08

Good point about the AI Birdman. It's also my highest priority. If the AI is challenging, and in a smart way so, I will love the game even if it has many bad concepts. I just can't dislike a game with a good AI.

TechWins

December 9, 2003, 18:13

Firaxis needs to hire Sn00py to do all the terrain graphics.:D Practically everyone uses his artwork over Firaxis' anyways, so he might as well get paid for it, too.

Jon Miller

December 9, 2003, 18:54

I sure don't

in fact, no one I knows does

Jon Miller

Fosse

December 9, 2003, 19:33

Originally posted by Brent
Should I post separate ideas in separate posts? I'm just trying not to increase my post count more than I have to. Am I posting too many ideas? Should I only post those that I give a high priority? Or do others tend to agree more with the ideas that I give a low priority? I wasn't posting the exact same sentence over and over, I was giving my priorites, each sentence was specific to the previous idea. Your point is still valid, however. I guess from now on I will instead type one to five asterisks, or should I not say what my priorities are? Should I wait until we have separate threads before posting more ideas, and would it be more acceptable on separate threads to post at the rate I have been?

Brent, if you have an idea post away! If you think it belongs in its own thread or another dedicated one, then do it that way... but the way I see it this is the place for posting over and over as things pop into your head.

TechWins

December 9, 2003, 20:33

I sure don't

Well, aren't you special.

Sn00py's artwork on terrain is far superior than what Firaxis created hands down. Whether you have chosen to use the better artwork, Sn00py's, is your own choice.

Fosse

December 9, 2003, 20:48

I'd like a map that has more in common with the one from X-Com than the ones from Civ games.

I don't want gratuitious 3D... but a true sphere map like that with coordinates instead of tiles.... would be a dream come true.

Jon Miller

December 9, 2003, 22:09

Originally posted by TechWins

Well, aren't you special.

Sn00py's artwork on terrain is far superior than what Firaxis created hands down. Whether you have chosen to use the better artwork, Sn00py's, is your own choice.

I don't think it is that clear cut

I don't think that other people do either

you are putting your own opinions as facts

I don't want the list of ideas that Techwins, Asmodean, and freinds think are correct

I want a list of ideas created by people at apolyton (including me, you and everyone else)

with no preferrence made by people who think too much of their own opinions

Jon Miller

TechWins

December 9, 2003, 22:34

I agree everyone's opinion should be equal, but the fact of the matter is that most people (here at Apolyton) use Sn00py's graphics or believe that his graphics are better than what Firaxis had to offer.

Either way, it was a joke while at the sametime a compliment to Sn00py. Take it as you will.

Torkkeli

December 10, 2003, 06:21

Not sure if this has been stated before but railroads need to have limited movement. I'd propose the following:
On the discovery of railroad giving tech railroads give your units 2x movement of roads. When some additional tech is researched movement on railroads would be 3x road. Maybe for another tech (very late in the game) it would go to 4x.
This would reflect the evolution of railroads through out the ages.

Nimrod

December 10, 2003, 19:47

What about barbarian cities. When the game is first started, there could be 1 in the most isolated place on the map. As the game progresses the number of barbarians cities could increase. But they only appear in unsettled lands at least 30 tiles from the nearest non barbarian city.

Fosse

December 10, 2003, 19:49

And what about old school barbs that could take over cities and build things? The Civ 3 way is much less cool.

How about a timer on such Barbarian Civs? If they manage to take over a city and hold it for 5-10 turns they become a full fledged Civ?

Others have had this idea before, I'm posting it because it's a good one.

Strider_479

December 11, 2003, 00:14

Hmm.....1st of all, i wonder whether the Firaxis guys read all this fabulous ideas....
Ok......here are my recomendations

The minor things 1st, better cityview graphics. i for 1 like 2 ad mire my cities in all their glory. But wat i get in Civ3 is a few skyscrapers & houses for a megalopolis. And Firaxis should also allow ppl 2 add new graphics for new wonders.

The Bigger things: Fear & domination. I find it wierd when a 2 city Civ right at my doorstep refuses my demands. The AI should be adjusted so that these weak Civs can be "controlled" & manipulated by larger one's without losing their independence.

Crime: Currently the only crime in Civ3 is corruption. I feel that crime & corruption should be incorporated together & each city have a crime meter. Crime should only affect city income but also cost the lives of citizens, cause damage & affect citizen happiness. Crime can be controlled thru llarge military garrisons, police stations. courthouses.......( lol maybe even a new unit called the policeman! :P )

Assimilation: Cities close 2 the border of other countries should have mixed populations as it is in real life. This should be more prevalent among friendly civilizations or in a prosperous civilization is next to a weaker 1. Such migration & emigration should also cause problems 2 both sides.

Food: One thing i hate in Civ3 is that u cant transfer food between cities. Maybe they should make in civ4 that cities with roads or railroad connections should be allowed to send food among each other. This would allow cities in remote locations 2 develop better. Food should also become a tradable source of income between civs.

Well.....dats my wishes for Civ4. I know some are a little far-fetched....but hey, they're all just suggestions & i might as well have sum fun givin em :)

Skanky Burns

December 11, 2003, 00:58

Crime: Currently the only crime in Civ3 is corruption.

I tend to think this is covered by the happiness levels and trade corruption. Small towns tend to have lower levels of crime and therefor lower levels of unhappy people. Larger cities have higher uncontrolled crime and therefore a higher proportion of people unhappy. Interesting idea that Military garrison help reduce corruption as well as unhappiness, though.

Sarxis

December 11, 2003, 02:00

Cities that actually sprawl the map as they get bigger/more infrastructure.

Urban Ranger

December 11, 2003, 02:22

I haven't read through this thread.

Has anybody suggested that we dig out the list we have for Civ 3 and see how many of those ideas have they implemented, and perhaps start from there?

chequita guevara

December 11, 2003, 15:56

SupplyUnits can only move a certain distance from their source of supply before they must start pillaging or be "out of supply."

Units must be able to trace a line of supply back to their supply source or be considered "out of supply."

"Out of supply" units lose their ablity to move and lose hit points for each turn out of supply, until they die.

Partisans and explorers don't need supply.

Nationalism
Unassimilated citizens shouldn't become unruly until the nationalism advance. At that point, assimilation ceases. Increase possibility of cities rejoining original civ or revolting and brings dead civs back to life.

Minor Combat
Not all combat should immediately result in war. You should be able to attack units in your own civ without automatically starting a war.

Abstract navy
Make the navy more like air units now. Base them and send them on missions and give them ranges.

Revolutions
Don't make revolution an option. It's something that happens to you, and it's bad.

When in revolution, you can be attacked without a declaration of war. Neighbors could take cities.

Your cities can revolt and start new civs.

Maybe you have to pick a side in the revolution and make sure it wins. Your neighbers might declare war on your side or on the other side.

Fosse

December 11, 2003, 18:14

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Minor Combat
Not all combat should immediately result in war. You should be able to attack units in your own civ without automatically starting a war.

YES!! Declaring war should be strictly diplomatic!! Combat should be combat.

Why would you ever fight without declaring war? Disputed territory on another continent perhaps. Worth fighting for, but not warring for. Tresspassing units, of course.

Why would you ever want to declare war?
When you're at war, you don't lose face in the international arena. Take over a province without declaring war, and you are the bully and hated one.

chequita guevara

December 11, 2003, 18:28

It would be useful for taking out those pesky settlers who keep invading your claimed areas. ;)

chequita guevara

December 11, 2003, 18:32

Mid-game starts
Not all civiliazations have lasted 6,000 years. Somce only started a little while ago, historically. Some sprang from the ashes of former empires.

Along these lines, if you get conquered, the game could play itself along quickly to see if your civ revolts and comes back to life again.

Kuciwalker

December 11, 2003, 18:57

Originally posted by Fosse
I'd like a map that has more in common with the one from X-Com than the ones from Civ games.

I don't want gratuitious 3D... but a true sphere map like that with coordinates instead of tiles.... would be a dream come true.

If there is a spherical map, I want it to be an option for map design. I don't want all maps to be spherical. Moreover, I want to be able to have both wraparound 2D maps and "flat" 2D maps.

Kuciwalker

December 11, 2003, 18:57

Originally posted by Torkkeli
Not sure if this has been stated before but railroads need to have limited movement. I'd propose the following:
On the discovery of railroad giving tech railroads give your units 2x movement of roads. When some additional tech is researched movement on railroads would be 3x road. Maybe for another tech (very late in the game) it would go to 4x.
This would reflect the evolution of railroads through out the ages.

As an option, maybe. Giving railroad unlimited movement (at least as an option in the editor) is good for scenarios :)

Kuciwalker

December 11, 2003, 19:01

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
SupplyUnits can only move a certain distance from their source of supply before they must start pillaging or be "out of supply."

Units must be able to trace a line of supply back to their supply source or be considered "out of supply."

"Out of supply" units lose their ablity to move and lose hit points for each turn out of supply, until they die.

Partisans and explorers don't need supply.

Two objections: bad for AI, and MM-heavy.

Nationalism
Unassimilated citizens shouldn't become unruly until the nationalism advance. At that point, assimilation ceases. Increase possibility of cities rejoining original civ or revolting and brings dead civs back to life.

No way. Revolts happened all the time before Nationalism. Look at the Romans in Israel.

Minor Combat
Not all combat should immediately result in war. You should be able to attack units in your own civ without automatically starting a war.

It's called "hidden nationality".

Abstract navy
Make the navy more like air units now. Base them and send them on missions and give them ranges.

NO!

This is WAY too abstract, and it's bad for scenarios.

Revolutions
Don't make revolution an option. It's something that happens to you, and it's bad.

When in revolution, you can be attacked without a declaration of war. Neighbors could take cities.

Your cities can revolt and start new civs.

Maybe you have to pick a side in the revolution and make sure it wins. Your neighbers might declare war on your side or on the other side.

A bit harsh.

Fosse

December 11, 2003, 19:22

Originally posted by skywalker

If there is a spherical map, I want it to be an option for map design. I don't want all maps to be spherical. Moreover, I want to be able to have both wraparound 2D maps and "flat" 2D maps.

Why not just have scenario maps be a section of a sphere's surface? You'll get more accurate maps, and they'll certainly feel flat.

Regarding 2d wraparound? Why? What advantages do you feel that this brings to any map that aren't trumped by spherical ones?

Fosse

December 11, 2003, 19:24

Originally posted by skywalker

As an option, maybe. Giving railroad unlimited movement (at least as an option in the editor) is good for scenarios :)

Okay... I think the big thing is REMOVE THE HARDCODE!

I'm very strongly against infinite movement of any kind in the standard epic game. If some scenario designers can use it, then I'll not try to deny them that.

Fosse

December 11, 2003, 19:29

Regarding "hidden nationality" doubling as the sort of skirmishes we're talking about.

Nah... Not the same thing. To begin with, hidden nationality is kind of silly.

Admiral: "Captain, you said you were attacked by French speaking ships off the coast of France. Where were they from?"
Capt: "Well... they weren't flying a flag, so we couldn't tell."

Okay, I know. Extreme. But hidden nationality units represent, to me, non military and "unofficial" units. Privateers certainly fit into this category. If spies come back, they should too.

To have small border skirmishes that can escalate into full blown wars though... that'd be cool. It's a new diplomatic wrinkle, requires little in resources, is easy to understand, and won't hurt anything. To me, it's a no-brainer.

skywalker, I agree that the "zone of supply" doesn't quite cut it. I wouldn't mind seeing supply enter in somehow... but that isn't it.

I think he meant that Nationalism would increase chances of revolts, not that they wouldn't be allowed beforehand. That's okay with me, but it isn't a huge deal IMO.

Kuciwalker

December 11, 2003, 19:30

Why not just have scenario maps be a section of a sphere's surface? You'll get more accurate maps, and they'll certainly feel flat.

What if I want to create, for example, a space scenario, though? I don't want any curvature there ;) or a discworld scenario :D

Regarding 2d wraparound? Why? What advantages do you feel that this brings to any map that aren't trumped by spherical ones?

A small world, for example. You may not want the severe curvature that it would have, but you do want wraparound. Plus, I just feel more comfortable with a 2D map.

Kuciwalker

December 11, 2003, 19:34

Regarding "hidden nationality" doubling as the sort of skirmishes we're talking about.
Nah... Not the same thing. To begin with, hidden nationality is kind of silly.
Admiral: "Captain, you said you were attacked by French speaking ships off the coast of France. Where were they from?"
Capt: "Well... they weren't flying a flag, so we couldn't tell."
Okay, I know. Extreme. But hidden nationality units represent, to me, non military and "unofficial" units. Privateers certainly fit into this category. If spies come back, they should too.

Here's a reason: diplomatic incidents. If the admiral attacked France without "proof" of France's guilt, France could just say "they're the aggressors!" Plus, repeated attacks by Hidden Nationality units actually do decrease the AI's whatchacallit (it isn't reputation, it's the gracious-polite-etc thing) of you. Enough, and they'll go to war.

Fosse

December 11, 2003, 19:40

Originally posted by skywalker

What if I want to create, for example, a space scenario, though? I don't want any curvature there ;) or a discworld scenario :D

Oh, come now! Don't you know that space is curved! :D

Seriously, I get what you mean. I'd rather see, though, the game designed to be the best Civlization game possible, not the best vehicle for space mods. :)
But you could always have a section of an ENORMOUS sphere for your discworld!

A small world, for example. You may not want the severe curvature that it would have, but you do want wraparound. Plus, I just feel more comfortable with a 2D map.

True about the severe curvature. I'd like to see the smallest maps be closer in scale to standard of Civ 3 though, which I feel fits well with the sphereical world's possiblities.

The tiniest maps are something I'm willing to see sacrificed for a great spherical map! I feel its advantages outweigh its drawbacks signifigantly.

And regarding the comfort level of 2d maps... it's time to move on! Break your comfort boundaries! :D

chequita guevara

December 11, 2003, 20:12

[SIZE=1] Originally posted by skywalker
Plus, repeated attacks by Hidden Nationality units actually do decrease the AI's whatchacallit (it isn't reputation, it's the gracious-polite-etc thing) of you. Enough, and they'll go to war.

So you're saying I should mod the game so all units have hidden nationality now? That would suck and be like hitting a flat with a sledgehammer.

chequita guevara

December 11, 2003, 20:16

Originally posted by skywalker
[SIZE=1] Originally posted by chegitz guevara
[q]Nationalism
Unassimilated citizens shouldn't become unruly until the nationalism advance. At that point, assimilation ceases. Increase possibility of cities rejoining original civ or revolting and brings dead civs back to life.

No way. Revolts happened all the time before Nationalism. Look at the Romans in Israel.

Nationalist revolts in the ancient and medieval eras were quite rare. Most folks didn't care what language the rulers spoke as long as the taxes weren't high and they left local tradiations and religions alone.

Minor Combat
Not all combat should immediately result in war. You should be able to attack units in your own civ without automatically starting a war.

It's called "hidden nationality".

Not a viable option for what I'm talknig about.

Abstract navy
Make the navy more like air units now. Base them and send them on missions and give them ranges.

NO!

This is WAY too abstract, and it's bad for scenarios.

The current way the navies are used is ridiculous.

Revolutions
Don't make revolution an option. It's something that happens to you, and it's bad.

When in revolution, you can be attacked without a declaration of war. Neighbors could take cities.

Your cities can revolt and start new civs.

Maybe you have to pick a side in the revolution and make sure it wins. Your neighbers might declare war on your side or on the other side.

A bit harsh.

Revolutions are harsh.

PresidentMarcos

December 11, 2003, 20:19

My Civ4 would have a space layer, and have a tile stand for one square kilometer. However, it would solve the memory storage problem by storing terrain as a huge 3D model. Anyway, the Civ4 I'd like to see would have cities that would spread over time to cover multiple tiles. In addition, I would like hexes instead of tiles. Also, an Alpha Centauri style terrain system woud be very nice.

PresidentMarcos

December 11, 2003, 20:26

Also, add a tactical component: whenever two units or groups of units clash, you can either resolve it automatically, or go into Battle View (AoE like) and direct your units in combat personally.

Jon Miller

December 12, 2003, 09:54

I really liked the ability in Civ3 to change production and the like from the main map

Jon Miller

Rasputin

December 12, 2003, 11:27

you mean change what each city making>?> right clicking each city does that... that simple enough......

Jon Miller

December 12, 2003, 13:02

yes

civ3 had it

civ2 had it

I Am asking for a return

Jon Miller

Rasputin

December 12, 2003, 13:50

or jut askign for a +1 :lol:

Beta

December 14, 2003, 22:22

Hmmm - this will require some thought. I like the early comments about the combat system from CtP.

But I think the first thing I would ask for is that Asmodean's avatar be one of the leader heads. :)

Kuciwalker

December 14, 2003, 23:34

And Skanky Burns' and Dissident's :b:

Stefu

December 15, 2003, 08:13

Too much time has passed. Furthermore, many ideas will be inspired by the changes to the series that Civ 3 introduced, so the old list is just that: Old

However, we should at least go through The List and see what proposals could be reused. At least go through the Essential Civ3 List - many good proposals in there that went unheeded.

Asmodean

December 15, 2003, 16:46

Originally posted by Beta
Hmmm - this will require some thought. I like the early comments about the combat system from CtP.

But I think the first thing I would ask for is that Asmodean's avatar be one of the leader heads. :)

:lol: :lol: :lol:

Yeah...that'd be nice, eh?

Asmodean

Asmodean

December 15, 2003, 16:47

Originally posted by Stefu

However, we should at least go through The List and see what proposals could be reused. At least go through the Essential Civ3 List - many good proposals in there that went unheeded.

What do you guys think my good night reading is these days ;)

Asmodean

Space05us

December 18, 2003, 06:34

I dont know if anyone has mentioned it yet, but being able to play Civ in a window would be nice. :b:

Maquiladora

December 18, 2003, 06:46

I agree, its one of the things that makes civ2 so addictive to play, and easy to hide at work.

Adagio

December 19, 2003, 12:29

What I'd like in Civ4:

A new era
Like mentioned in this thread:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=50341

This thread was before PTW's time though, but still valid ;)

DarkCloud

December 19, 2003, 18:57

sorry about posting this here too, but I don't want it to get lost and couldn't figure out where to put it:

I would also suggest adding air capacity to the game... basically designating air routes for supplies in the game.
For example: Armor Units in Washington can be put onto a Cargo Plain and flown to the front in Tripoli, or something of that sort.

Frozzy

December 19, 2003, 23:24

I don't know where to put this so...

I'd like to have the option to create civs out of your own civ. So if your nation becomes too rowdy, you can seperate a part of civ and rebuild your nation.

DarkCloud

December 20, 2003, 13:45

Frozzy, I'll take that and add it to the Civilizations section... It's an intriguing idea, although I don't know how much use it will really get... why would someone want to give up part of their nation unless they were going for space victory? or some sort of non-size, non-combat victory?

Frozzy

December 20, 2003, 13:56

If your Civ is on the verge of revolting against you, you can just cut off the rowdy cities so you can work on making the ones you have better.

DarkCloud

December 20, 2003, 13:59

I suppose that makes sense.

Nikolai

December 20, 2003, 15:33

If we have some kind of vassal feature in Civ4, the newly created civ should be that. After all, they have been given their independence by you, right?:) If there is no vassal feature, the new civ should at least have very good relations to you for a long time, and be very forthcoming to all oyur proposals.:)

Myrddin

December 20, 2003, 15:50

Maybe not - how friendly are the ex Soviet states to Russia?

DarkCloud

December 20, 2003, 17:12

Actually, many of them are very friendly toward russia and are moving toward an economic union with mother russia... look at the Asian-SSR states for examples of that, Myrddin.

Nikolai

December 20, 2003, 17:22

Well, firstly the ex Soviet states didn't get out of the union with the motherland's blessing...;) And think of it; If a country is granted independence with the motherland's blessing, don't you think they'd be gratefull?:)

Myrddin

December 20, 2003, 18:00

The Central Asian states were not very friendly to Russia (or Russians living in them) at the time of the break-up of the USSR - friendliness now has more to do with economic realities

Nikolai

December 20, 2003, 19:15

See my post...;)

Urban Ranger

December 21, 2003, 02:27

It's just that a lot of people put a lot of time into developing ideas for Civ 3 and they were unheeded. Some of them might be obsolete by features in the new game, but surely it is easier to update ideas that are thoroughly discussed and polished than to start from scratch?

Maybe it's just my software development habits ;)

Mr. President

December 21, 2003, 02:35

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
It's just that a lot of people put a lot of time into developing ideas for Civ 3 and they were unheeded. Some of them might be obsolete by features in the new game, but surely it is easier to update ideas that are thoroughly discussed and polished than to start from scratch?

Maybe it's just my software development habits ;)

It's not just you.

No matter what or if any ideas from this forum are implemented, large numbers of people will be satisfied and large numbers of people will be dissatisfied.

I thought that Wizards of the Coast's Selecting Eighth Edition event would bring people together. Wrongo. The Magic online community is more polarized than ever.

Bottom line: You can satisfy some of the people some of the time and you can't satisfy all of the people all of the time.

Urban Ranger

December 21, 2003, 02:42

Well, I wasn't exactly saying that huge numbers of people will be disappointed, I was merely saying that a lot of people are going down some well trodden paths over and over again. :)

It seems that these people will be bitterly disappointed when their suggestions get ignored by Firaxis, like what happened last time.

Nikolai

December 21, 2003, 05:33

We obviously should have learned something by now, though...;)

art_vandelai

December 23, 2003, 14:25

I'd like to see CIV evolve from the 'found a city with x radius and build everything in that area model.

What I envision is a 2 level map. The main level of the map would be similar to the current map - that would be used to move your units, and administer the game. The second level would be at a higher level of detail (think 10 x 10 for each square).

In the start of the game, there would be fewer cities and more spread out farming type commuinities, until the techs were researched to allow for urban type facilities (granaries, aqueducts, etc.) Buildings would be placed on a square (or number of squares for larger buildings, walls, etc.

An army would not be able to occupy an entire main map square, unless there's enough room there for its units (maybe 10 squares per unit in the beginning) or a barracks/fort in the square to house it.

Instead of moving workers around, use the population in each square to create additional improvements. Building forces, settler caravans, etc. would subtract population to each square
while building farms, granaries, aqueducts, would increase the rate at which a square gained population.

Large cities later on in the game would take up several map squares, and be able to apportion % of the population to various tasks (i.e. 10% agriculture, 5% military, 20% transportation infrastructure, 30% city production, 35% commerce) while the buildings in the vicinity (not necessarily in the same square - would expand with technological development) would add to each square's working effectiveness.

Defenses would be handled by building military facilities (e.g. barracks, forts, in the syquare(s) to be defended, or by moving armies from square to square. At the detail level, you would see the camps, forts, etc. showing multiple battalions.

Roads would take up 1 small square and be continuously upgradable. (pathway, cobblestone, asphalt, highway, interstate) and would increase in effectiveness in terms of moves per turn with each upgrade. Railroads and roads would be mutually exclusive. Armies would only be able to move 1 way on a road or railroad each turn. There would be a significant cost for upkeep of roads at the higher levels, which will ensure that superhighways only get built between major cities, not on every square of the map.

To aid in micromanagement, make a number of map squares selectable at a time (CTRL-click), and the preferences can be set at a global level.

I like the idea of claiming land by settling in the vicinity or having armies stake a claim. If an area is sparsely populated, in diplomacy, other civs could contest your ownership, and even start moving troops in to provoke a war.

I would like to see more buildings/improvements/wonders available, as well as more middle-late game unit types.

Spiffor

December 28, 2003, 07:14

Ell, here is a very small idea that I think would add some spice to the game:

When a Civ has conquered a city, this Civ should give it a new name when the city's culture under the conqueror exceeds the culture there was under the previous ruler

I think it would be a nice addition, and it'll really look like you're waging war to Germany or to the Celts :b:

Fosse

December 28, 2003, 16:21

Spiffor,
Nice.

Did anyone else who played SMAC find themselves suddenly enraged when a base taken by the AI had its name changed? It could be the worst base ever, one that you intentionally left unguarded, and you'd get the message "The So and So have changed the name of FosseLand. They now fasion it, "Discotown."

Suddenly nothing else mattered except getting the base back and renaming it! :D

It is the little things like that, Spiffor, that really add up. :b:

Bonaparte

December 29, 2003, 13:27

Last night I started a new game on a random, huge map with a lot of islands. There were only 3 competing AI civs. After a short while I discover that 2 of the AI civs started on the same island as I did, while the other AI civ had the rest of the huge map for there own. The point of me setting up the game the way I did was so that hopfully each civ would start on there own island. In the end I had to start over. So I thought to myself they should have a little box on the set up screen that you can either check off or not check off. If it is checked off then you will be guaranteed that each civ will have there own starting island or continent...and if not checked off then the game will distribute civs in the same fashion it does right now.

vee4473

December 29, 2003, 17:24

Not sure if this is the place, or if it has been mentioned.

I would like the designers to solve the problem of having to manually reassign city workers after a polluted square is cleaned up.

This is especially a funsucker when you have specialists assigned in many cities, and if you just click the city center, then yeah, the the worker goes back to work, but so do all the specialists.

Then you have to reassign the specialists.

Surely a solution can be found to streamline this process.

I don't understand why the game code ,or whatever, can't automatically send the city worker back to the tile he came from.

vee4473

December 29, 2003, 17:51

Oh and by the way, this same issue applies to reassigning city workers after you make entertainers to keep the peace during govt switches or before you build an improvement.

then you have to go back in and reassign.

Bonaparte

December 30, 2003, 23:40

Originally posted by vee4473
I would like the designers to solve the problem of having to manually reassign city workers after a polluted square is cleaned up.

This is especially a funsucker when you have specialists assigned in many cities, and if you just click the city center, then yeah, the the worker goes back to work, but so do all the specialists.

I'll second that motion.

Q Classic

December 31, 2003, 01:18

the old list(s): i have the old firaxis forums wish list for civ3 in a doc format. i'll upload it by next week when i get my computer back.

Merp

January 1, 2004, 06:23

I think the sooner that multiple threads or a dedicated forum for Civ 4 ideas is implemented the better. I know that the original idea was to start on a single thread, but this thread is already pretty chaotic, with a lot of repeated ideas.

EDIT- OK, I'm a tool who should have checked the rest of the forum first :D

gnome

January 1, 2004, 22:05

Two big, general suggestions:

More rewards for the gamer
Especially in SP mode, but optionally in MP... give more multimedia rewards to the person playing. Animated councils, wonder movies, riot scenes, city views, newspaper headlines... any items of interest that give the player a chance to sit back for a moment and ENJOY that they just spent 80 turns trying to accomplish something. This is the biggest flaw of Civ3 over Civ2.

Make them all optional of course for the gamer that just wants to get to the next turn.

More balancers
Include more methods by which a skilled player that is falling behind can catch up to a player in a superior position. Cheaper espionage is one possibility, but in general a good player should be able to catch up from a bad starting position or a generally losing position, by playing EXTREMELY well.

Fosse

January 1, 2004, 23:13

Gnome, both of your points are very good ones.

More rewards make a huge difference, even though they seem like the wouldn't. The first month of SMAC and Civ 2 I watched every movie. Now, I play without them 9 out of 10 games... but that 10th game does so much to revitalize the game.

And balancers are a huge deal.

Kuciwalker

January 2, 2004, 07:14

Originally posted by Merp
I think the sooner that multiple threads or a dedicated forum for Civ 4 ideas is implemented the better. I know that the original idea was to start on a single thread, but this thread is already pretty chaotic, with a lot of repeated ideas.

EDIT- OK, I'm a tool who should have checked the rest of the forum first :D

:b: we've basically made a really big forumjack.

Bonaparte

January 2, 2004, 15:14

I have another idea...and no this hasn't been mentioned. I really like the fact that I can automate some of my workers to clean pollution, but there are two things I don't like and wish were fixed/changed....

I hate when they waist time cleaning volcanoes...it waists a turn when they land on it and one when they get off it plus all the time needed to clean it...in the meantime the rest of my civ gets all polluted. If I could build a road on the volcano I wouldn't b***h....Is there a way to put roads on volcanoes?

The second thing is that I wish workers that have been set to automatically clean pollution would go back to doing so after turns in which there wasn't polluted squares in my civilization.

ImpossibleDream

January 2, 2004, 17:26

Couple things I'd like to see ...

1. When exploring territory, the first Civ to encounter a feature get to name it. The name appears on the map for all to see for the rest of the game. Mountain ranges, rivers, seas, etc.

2. Better city graphics, or none at all. Those shabby Civ3 in-city graphics were better left undone. How bizarre did it look to have a couple of skyscrapers, some giant Wonders, a cluster of houses, and various odds and ends make up the largest city in the world?

3. More realism! Actual numbers for population, ability to move food from city to city, public works expendatures as opposed to micro-managing workers, STACKED COMBAT, more trade and spying.

4. Take a cue from Europa Universalis, which a friend introduced me to as "Civilization for thinking people." I took offense to that -- becuase I've played a thousand Civ games over the years -- but in a way he was right. From graphics to statistics to trade to millitary matters, Civ games have been great, but they tend to gloss over a lot of the realism that is fascinating and challenging in a real-world sim.

Bonaparte

January 8, 2004, 16:57

I am so sick and tired of having my civ start on the same stinking, little island as another civ especially when you concider that I am playing on a huge, island filled (80% water) map with only 4 other AI civs. The whole point of me using fewer civs on a huge map is so that every civ gets some room to grow before an encounter, but NO, my civ always gets a little company immediately!!!! ... so then I have to start all over and over and over again until finally I get the chance for my civ to grow before running into another civ, but I'll never know if the AI civs are getting that "room" (which I want them to) when I finally do.

Now I said this before and I'll say it again, because I am so sick and tired of having my civ start on the same stinking, little island as another civ (Hey, I repeated that to), but there should be a button that you can click when setting up the game that will (if clicked) give each civ there own starting island ... this way people like me can relax a little and can actually create a civ without being crowded and without having to go to war soon after the game starts.

I was planning on playing a new game today, but I had to restart 10 times already because of what I wrote above, so I am here writing this AGAIN!!!!

:mad: :mad: :mad:

Bonaparte

January 8, 2004, 17:03

Originally posted by Bonaparte
I hate when they waist time cleaning volcanoes...it waists a turn when they land on it and one when they get off it plus all the time needed to clean it...in the meantime the rest of my civ gets all polluted. If I could build a road on the volcano I wouldn't b***h....Is there a way to put roads on volcanoes?

While I'm at it I might as well quote myself. This was dumb to say, I must have been half asleep when I said it! :o

Filippo

January 9, 2004, 11:40

Redo all the tech research system. It has been the same from Civ2 and in all CtP versions too, and I never liked it.

Why ? Too little strategy (com'on you almost always research the same), finding techs for free sucks big time because it screwes up the game, the tech research is too fast in the beginning.

I would love an engine that allows me to have a slider to use to set tech stagnation. I would put the highest :P

Currently in this game you don't have time to enjoy what you just researched because you're going to have something else very soon, or worse it will be outdated right after you built it.

Also I would make tech trade much harder. How about, you need to spend half the standard tech since points to learn it from someone else ?

Fosse

January 10, 2004, 19:36

There doesn't seem to be an exact place for this idea yet... but I've also stuck it Diploacy if anyone wants to discuss it there.

I would like to create a new state of land owndership, occupation.

If France and England go to war, and England captures Leeds, then Leeds and all territory that the capture turns over to France, is considered English territory, occupied by France. France exploits all resources, but it is still recognized by the world as English.

If France has an MPP with the Celts, and England takes back Leeds, then the MPP isn't activated because the French are the clear aggresors. If England pushes on and attaks the English on some land that was French at the war's opening, the MPP is activated.

At the end of the war occupied territory can be put on the bargaining table. Whoever keeps it at the peace treaty official gains control. So if England is willing to give up Leeds to sign peace, it becomes a real French city.

This will make MPPs stronger and less unpredictable... so you can sign one and not worry about your pact mate waging a purely aggresive war that activates thier "protection." Perhaps England would be able to offer the occupied land to another country, on the condition that the other country can take it from France. So at the end of the war, the Romans might get Leeds if they enter an alliance with England.

khai

January 11, 2004, 10:17

City improvment / Military

An interesting thing would be that large and strong units should be avaible to build only if a city has a certain structure build.

Like to build a catapult there should be a carpenter in a city.

To build a cannon there should be a smelter.

Things like this would in my opinion make you care more about those units.

You could also send some sabotage attacks on an enemy city to destroy such structures to gain advantage in battle.

ThePlagueRat

January 11, 2004, 20:31

Great idea khai... Then I think those units should be more effective than those in Civ3. In combination with a CTP-like battlesystem that should be fine. A gunsmith and a smelter and a ranch or something would be neccessary to build a powerful army of five cannons behind ten musketeers with some cavalry. Just like you can gain a bit too easily in CTP without the structures. Resource demands like Civ3 could also be combined in that system... Take the best from every game! :D

Kaak

January 11, 2004, 20:51

Technology

Please please please don't make it so that you have to discover all the techs of an age before moving to new techs. This is absolutely ridiculous, and whomever thought of it should be whipped and beaten. It tech path is a major part of strategy, so don't limit this.

General

Use civ2 as the base and not civ3.

ThePlagueRat

January 12, 2004, 22:38

And the workers should dissapear, as mentioned. They are indeed very boring to move along. And it's very boring to move 100 unstacked troops from one continent to the other side. A nicer stacking system would be preferable, and a public works system... Where building some terrain improvement demanded different resouces, a certain workforce, structures built, but no silly unit.

Kickbooti

January 13, 2004, 12:58

A few thoughts on corruption.

I like to make empires. Big empires. Nothing is more satisfying than taking cities from my foes and showing them what a civilization SHOULD look like. Corruption in the current model makes this all but impossible.

Alright, I admit, NO corruption in democracy under Civ II was idealistic. But I don't think corruption should be as bad under ever form of government in Civ III.

Here are my ideas:

Communication - It seems to me that the easier communications are between the 'powers that be' in the capitol and hinterland the less the corruption. For example, I think corruption should be reduced the more 'connected' a city is to the capital. Roads, rails, harbors, airports, even (should Civ IV see fit) telecomunications facilities make the world 'smaller' and justice 'easier.'

Judiciary - I would like to see the effectiveness of courthouse actually inreased. They help not at all after a certain number of cities or a certain distance from the palace or FP.

I think that an appropriate Small Wonder would be The Supreme Court. I think that this should either put a courthouse in every city OR increase the effectiveness of existing courthouses.

Failing these I would like to see a 'sub-wonder' called The Circuit Court. Allow a Circuit Court to be built for every 7 - 10 (number to be determined) cities and it has the effect of the capitol for corruption purposes.

I know corruption can't be eliminated. But let's face it, in a modern democracy Civ III doesn't accurately represent the real level of corruption/production. I don't think Hawaii produces only one sheild, idea, gold piece.

And that's all I have to say about that.

JamesPk

January 13, 2004, 13:35

Originally posted by dexters
Provinces, each a unit, like a mini Civ, each with a capital, and each made up of cities, definable by the player, but it must be geographic in nature. Can't have provinces spread all over the place.

Provinces and sub-capital cities should also vary on what type of gov. you have and the population of your civ., also provinces should be able to be shared (i.e) Kurdistan is part of Iraq, Turkey, and other nations in the Middle East. I hope that is something you were talking about.

Kickbooti

January 13, 2004, 15:11

Workers

I don't mind workers, it is nice to be able to interdict improvments. But I think that workers should be able to be formed into 'armies.' I generally cluster a number of workers together to accomplish their tasks more quickly. The 'move stack' button is nice, but still akward. Just allow us to stack workers on a semi-permanent basis and do the work multiplication automatically.

Foreign Investment

Nothing is more frustrating that not being able to trade with some resource-rich, backwater hole becuase they haven't developed ports, or roads, etc. I would like to see the option for foreign investment.

If you have good relations with a country, there should be a mechanism by which you can offer to build a harbor for them to facilitate trade.

If they are too backward to do it themselves, they would obviously lack the sophistication to run it. So your civ would manage it in as expressed by a percentage of the trade going to your civ as profit.

This would work well with the +/- cultural idea that could replace the Civ3 'absolute' cultural model. If your country is a major force in trade it will increase your cultural influence.

Perhaps you could even negotiate 'mineral rights.' If coutry A has excess iron, perhaps country B would pay for the right to trade that iron to coutnries C and F.

Trade

I would also like to see the ability to trade tangible items. It would be nice if the AI were more ameniable to trading cities. I have tried trading the industrual 'heart' of my cive to another for one of their cities to see if they would do it. Never. European histroy shows that that isn't realistic.

Also, I would like to be able to trade/sell units. Sort of like the old lend-lease program, or even the amrs sales of the modern era. I'd gladly trade two of my antiquated iron-clads to a sailing-ship civ for 20 gp per turn, or for the mineral rights on the aluminum they can't detect yet.

Dynamic Diplomacy
'If/Then' treaties would be nice.

If you have a transcontinental civ, it may be in your interest to see civ A remain strong in a partucular region, but not in their island holdings across the globe.

I would like to have treaties along the lines of "If Civ A attacks cities 1, 2 and 3 of Civ B then we go to war." Or even mutual protection pacts against certain countries rather than simply a blank check.

khai

January 13, 2004, 15:17

Units / General

What worried me in previous Civs is the lack of ocean usage. It only worked as a natural limit for the settlers.

I would like to see that nice oil on the ocean tile. And just imagine that you build a oil rig in your port city (or some ships that carries the parts of rig and then assemble it) and you claim that oil it should not only give you this resource but also some decend bonus to production or maybe even some to the trade.

Think of the strategy possibilities of such a structure. You must defend it, becouse it could be captured.

It would make the ocean more colorful (and I don't mean the black colour of an oil spillage :D ).

Bisonbison

January 13, 2004, 20:44

Unique Units for different civs

I like the idea of UUs, but not the fact that they always belong to the same civ. If I pick the romans, I don't want to have to have the best swordsman game after game after game. I say, let the way an individual game develops determine who gets what Unique Unit.

The first civ to discover a Unique Unit tech (like Iron Working) would have the option of activating that unique unit or not. If they did, then their one and only UU in the game would be Legion or what have you, and no other civ could claim it. If they decided not to take it, then the second civ to discover Iron Working would have the option and then the third Civ and so on, and Civ A could hold out for a UU further up the tech tree.

That alone would make me play with Civ characteristics on.

ThePlagueRat

January 13, 2004, 21:33

I would rather have a Unit workshop like they had in SMAC.
Just a bit different:

Unique Item!
To make a Unique Unit you should have the structures to
create certain items for the unit, like a smith, and resources like iron, then you can make for instance a uniqe Roman Shield (while others would get a lesser Iron Armor) to put on your phalanx to make them a Legion, then add spears. If you want to make them more offensive just add another weapon if you got one. Then you would create your own version, making them even more Unique. :D Then you can save that config for later...

I like better the idea of a structure and resources to get the items (both within trade network), instead of just requiring a tech, in which you had to get in SMAC, e.g. from Synthmetal to Plasma armor you just needed techs.

khai

January 17, 2004, 10:00

Resources

I think that there should be more impact placed on resources. They should not only be required for building units.

My idea is that when you have lets say 5 horses in your possesion, then you should get a +1 to movment of mounted units. It could be explained that you have the best breed in the world , and they are stronger.

The same applies to iron --> get 5 of them and you can smelt the pure iron --> +1 to defense...

Then you could play the game like in a real world, where resources matter a lot. There's been many wars for resources.

Trifna

January 17, 2004, 16:50

Maybe this thread should be closed so that the posts go where they now belong: the more specific "The List" discussions.

Guynemer

January 18, 2004, 01:47

Lord knows I've said this a lot, but it still needs to be said.

Civ3 did a lot of things right, lots of improvements: civ-wide economic unit support, strategic/luxury resources, golden ages, unique units, real differences between civs, culture... this is but a short list.

It left some things behind in SMAC that I rather liked (social engineering, unit workshop, planetary council), but may not have worked quite so well in a history-based game as opposed to scifi.

But there was one thing left behind in SMAC that definitely, absolutely Civ3 needed. It was what made SMAC more fun than Civ3 ever was.

Flavor. The little extras. Things that didn't make a lick of difference to actual gameplay, but made all the difference to a more enjoyable experience. Secret project movies. Quotes for new buildings and techs. Yeah, it's window dressing--but presentation is important.

Bring back the flavor to Civ4!

Temlakos

January 18, 2004, 09:54

Originally posted by Solver
The problem with the worker model is, it becomes too slow and too tedious.

Moving each worker by hand and assigning oders is too slow. That can become boring and tedious. Also, even when automated, it takes them all a while to move and carry out their actions - which goes far to make the game run much slower. Those who have played Civ 3 with 16 or more civs in a game will know what I'm speaking of - just all the Workers are enough to make it slow.

I don't object so much to individual workers building infrastructure where you need them to, and distinctions among industrious workers, slaves, and improved worker efficiencies over time.

But in the interest of realism, we ought not to have one worker type throughout the game as the Jack of All Trades.

I propose a new type of unit that I call the Combat Engineer. He'll cost twenty shields and one population point to build. And he and only he will be allowed to build fortresses and airfields--or else he will be able to build them twice as fast as the native "civilian" worker for the civilization that builds him. That means that he'll still work twice as fast if his civ is Industrious as if it isn't. Combat engineers will also be allowed to pillage, and to build roads or even lay rail twice as fast as an ordinary worker. Load one into an army and this army will be able to build a road as it moves.

Oh, BTW--as to stacked combat: I agree that the CTP stacked-combat model is definitely to be preferred. I would implement it by allowing you to load artillery into an army and have it deliver a ranged-attack punch before the marauders wade in.

And why shouldn't you be able to unload your troops from an existing army, upgrade them, and then reload the army and move on? Do Great Military Leaders really outlive their usefulness because they can't understand new technology? I'd like to ask General George C. "Blood and Guts" Patton what he'd think of that.

Temlakos

Temlakos

January 18, 2004, 17:33

Other ideas:

Why stop at Armies? Why not use some of those Great Military Leaders to form Fleets and Air Wings? Frankly, I never have thought that the game designers--of *any* of the Civ flavors, including CTP--really understood sea or air power. The very poor performance of the AI in the fielding of navies and air forces reflects this. So also do the capabilities--if you call them that--of sea and air units in these games.

CTP came the closest to implementing a decent air attack mechanism. This is, of course, a variation of their ranged-attack stacked-combat technique, using fighters in place of infantry and bombers in the place of artillery. (Actually, fighters in CTP or Civ are more like fighter-attack planes.) Civ III achieved its first baby step toward the proper use of aircraft with its Air Superiority, Bombing Run, and Re-base Mission orders to air units (which I assume represent air *groups*). But if you really want to simulate air combat as we understand it today, you send bombers with fighter escort and have them fight together. And you do not, as CTP did, have the ridiculous spectacle of ground troops, armed with nothing better than small arms, shooting down fighters.

Temlakos

ThePlagueRat

January 19, 2004, 11:58

Old idea comeback:

- Hire a sexy actress to play foreign minister. :D

And:

- Stop making silly looking leadehead animations. :mad:
I would rather have photos of apolytoners from the picture thead here: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=2647235#post2647235

Maniac

January 19, 2004, 21:09

Originally posted by Stefu
However, we should at least go through The List and see what proposals could be reused. At least go through the Essential Civ3 List - many good proposals in there that went unheeded.

Originally posted by Asmodean
What do you guys think my good night reading is these days ;)
Asmodean

Hi Asmodean, do you still have a copy of the List? :expect:

The Big Mc

January 20, 2004, 10:39

Originally posted by ThePlagueRat
Old idea comeback:

- Hire a sexy actress to play foreign minister. :D

I second that motion plus can we have alternates so we can personalize the council.

Kramsib

January 24, 2004, 07:38

Hi everyone, the Spanish Civilization Community in Apolyton has made this list of ideas for Civ IV. We want join this project with our communal contribution.

Some of us have some more ideas but we all subscribe the following list.

MAP AND TERRAIN.

1. Terraform options.
2. Channels, straits, … (We refer to those square vortex which are passable both, naval units and terrain units, like in Civilization II ).
3. Multimap (like Civilization II Test Of Time).
4. “Add” button for creating new terrain types in the editor.
5. “Add” button for creating new square improvements.
6. Place names. It would be good to have the option to put the place names in game (and obviously when editing an scenario).
7. Sailable rivers, fords, bridges, cliffs, … for localised scenarios in reduced areas.

UNITS

8. A more realistic combat system which includes hit points and supported damage.
9. Include an option in the editor to create air units in a Civilization II style.
10. Allow barbarians to take cities. Allow negotiations with barbarians to avoid an attack or pay them to attack other civ. At least, make this an editable option in the editor.

DIPLOMACY

11. More editable options for scenarios. Not only war and locked alliances, but also mutual protection pacts, embargos, … trade exchanges too.
12. New diplomatic options like asking a civ to do an action against or in favour another third.
13. The ability to edit the attitude of every civ for a scenario.
14. The ability to trade military units, not only workers.
15. It seems a good option to extend the idea of locked alliances to other treaties, like locked embargoes or locked mutual protection pacts, …

ESPIONAGE

16. More options, bribe cities, bribe units, poison water deposit, introduce nuclear artefact.
17. Use special units for subversive actions.
18. It seems to be good to combine the Civ III diplomatic system with special units to carry out the dirtiest covert operations.

GENERAL

19. More info in the advisors’ windows. The domestic or the commercial advisor could show info about the costs per city or per kind of building, which civ we are reciving money from, which civ we are sending money, …
20. Use continuous percentages instead of intervals of tens.
21. Include an indicator of the quantity of gold accumulated and the gold left to get an advance.
22. Include more leaderheads per civ, wonder movies and animations for conquest of cities, victories, civil disorders, “we love the leader days”, advisors, …

23. EVENTS.
24. Allow the editor to modify savegames / use savegames to create scenarios.
25. Bring back the Civil Wars in which a Civ were divided into several factions when its capital was taken.
25. bis When a city is far enough from the capital city and fells in civil disorder, it could proclaim its independence, thus beginning a civil war.
26. When a city flips there should be a fight among the garrisoned units and the revolted citizens. The CTP system is a good idea to get inspired.
27. The ability to bring food to other cities.

Bonaparte

January 30, 2004, 13:58

So far I hear a lot of good ideas, but remember, in order for players to use all these ideas suggested here they'll need time...you don't want to spend a lot of time working on something only to have it become obsolite or unnecessary before it's done...Maybe the advancement through the techs should be slower and more turns should then be added.

Oh, and in case it hasn't been mentioned I'd like to see expanded and alternate tech trees...every game I play I end up researching the same techs in the same order and, frankly, that gets tiresome.

DarkCloud

March 27, 2004, 18:12

Bump for more miscellaneous ideas! ;)

Rasputin

March 28, 2004, 02:33

ideas runiing short , time for input from game makers as to when they are going to start .

DarkCloud

March 29, 2004, 00:55

you mean Firaxis?

Rasputin

March 29, 2004, 01:13

anyone that going to make it ....

ThePlagueRat

April 1, 2004, 19:48

Originally posted by The Big Mc

I second that motion plus can we have alternates so we can personalize the council.

Yeah, then you will be able to sack the geeky fellow who encourages you to build the manhattan project and install the hot blonde chick as the new council member instead. She can give you advises such like "more hugging eachother" and of course "more peace in the world" :)

Anyway, two things:

1. Are we sure Firaxis will be progging this one?

2. If so, will they use the same fellas who progged SMAC and Civ2 ?

Spiffor

April 1, 2004, 22:53

Originally posted by ThePlagueRat
2. If so, will they use the same fellas who progged SMAC and Civ2 ?
Very unlikely, given they left to found BigHugeGames.

ThePlagueRat

April 2, 2004, 15:48

That's a pity. :(
I believe those guys are comptetent to make BugFreeGames too. SMAC was almost perfect when it hit the stores, and just needed some light patching. Few people can do that these days...

Mr. Nice Guy

April 8, 2004, 21:04

edit:

new location (http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=2882851#post2882851)

Oops. :p

Fyrecrypts

April 30, 2004, 21:34

Wonders

I feel a third tier of wonders should be created, global wonders. Like the internet, the manhattan project, a world bank or the way a united nations should be. Maybe have global wonders that help everyone, or global wonders that hurt everyone. I see the world bank as being very interesting.

Loan out your money, maybe give a portion of the interest to the civ that built it in the first place. Or you could borrow money from the bank, etc...

Multiplayer

A turnless game that's not exactally turnless. It sounds odd but bear with me.

The game would work so each individual object, like building a temple, or moving a unit somewhere takes a proportionate amount of time depending on how many turns it would've taken. For example, say 1 turn = 15 seconds. To build a temple would normally take 10 turns, so have it take 150 seconds to build. While moving a unit would've taken 2 turns, have it take 30 seconds to get somewhere.

It could even work against computer controlled civs, and would be a very fun way to get a quick game in.

Crazy ideas

I'd only like this idea if it was implemented right, the ability for a future in civilization games, too many times I'll end a game researching "Future Tech 24" and so on, and it does nothing. Make up techs that *might* exist at some point. It just sorta makes sense.

Another idea is the ability to use your spaceship in another way than just a space race victory, allow actually colonizing another planet. In conjunction with the futuristic era above it could make for a very interesting departure from the traditional civ 1-3.

Unfortunately, both of those ideas could be royally screwed up, and although Civ3 was great at living up to my expectations from 10 years of Civ1&2 (After a bit of playing Civ3 anyway. :D ), I feel that with Civ4 already being announced there just wouldn't be enough time to polish the above.

Not so crazy idea

A few simple things that could be done to make the game a bit better overall are your general content additions... more civs, more civilization traits, more worker abilities, more techs, more blah blah blah. As a reference maybe look at *some* of the things in the Double Your Pleasure Mod. They already took some ideas it seems when they added stuff to Conquests anyway.