Table of Contents

1 - The Terrain
2 - Terrain improvements
3 - Worker and PW ideas
4 - Transportation over the map
5 - Cities
6 - Pollution
7 - Mini-map
8 - Climate and weather
Conclusion

The Ideas

3 - Worker and PW ideas

3.1 - More 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.
(Posted by donegeal)

3.2 - A hybrid system

Fort tile improvements, I'd like to see a hybrid system. In this system, tile improvements such as irrigation and mining done within your borders would be handled by a public works type system. I don't want exactly what was had in CtP, though. I'd rather a system where you would start an irrigation project for an entire city, and it would take a lot of money/shields to produce, and once completed, would require a good deal of maintainence.

However, once you get outside the land that is technically yours, and you want to build roads, rails, colonies, and forts and such, it would require the use of workers.

This way in the early game you can still have fun building up your civilization, and in the late game you don't have to worry about the swarms of workers going around to cleanup this polution or irrigate that tile.
(Posted by Lorizael)

I like that... I'd actually like to see a combination use of workers/PW if you build Tile improvements outside of your city radius (not national borders), and PW used inside those radius.
(Posted by hexagonian)

3.3 - PW ideas

3.3.1 - Public Works, not workers

PUBLIC WORKS : exactly like in CTP.
(Posted by J-S)

3.3.2 - Public works director

How about a Public Works Director that works by automating workers? You could paint down roads like in Sim City, and workers would automatically start building them... or you could give a worker a direct order, and she would finish that project before going back to the Public Works Director for new instructions.

Each city could have a Public Works Submenu which would show three graphs of the maximum possible Food/Shields/Commerce if you optimized for each of those. So at a glance you can see - "The most Food I could possibly get out of this city is X, and the most shields is Y", etc. Then there would be a slider where you set the percentage priority of each of those.

When workers have no specific tasks given them directly nor any specific improvements from the Public Works Director (like roads or colonies, etc.) a worker will start upgrading the city radius based on the percentages you've chosen. If you go 50% Food 25% Shields 25% Commerce, the worker will build 2 food improvements, then one shield improvement, then 1 commerce.

This system would be flexible enough to allow you to micromanage in the early stages of the game when its most important, then forget about them later on, yet still have the ability to direct them if you want to. It would also be a lot more precise than the current automation of workers. And it preserves the ability to take slave workers to improve your civ's production.
(Posted by wrylachlan)

3.3.3 - PW costs something

Have public works cost something. Gold, food, shields, whatever floats your boat (I prefer gold though, because there is no clutter like a "public works reserve" à la CtP). Such a system can be implemented either in a CTP-ish system or in a Civish system (featuring workers): the key is that each individual public work costs something when performed.
(Posted by Spiffor)

3.3.4 - A possible PW system idea

You can build anywhere in your territory, and anywhere that you have a military presence. Improvements outside your territory cost more, and there is a third price tier for improvements inside hostile nations. The price difference is reflected both in construction time and in resource points needed.

If an improvement is pillaged while under construction, the pillaging player gains half the base construction cost of that improvement. This reflects the "capturing workers" aspect of civ3.

The interface is a basic click on the palette item, then click on the tile where you want it to go. An option to paint an area (think simcity zoning) with an improvement could be done, but I don't expect it to be necessary.

PW are paid for out of a pool, similar to CTP. I'm not overly fussy about whether this pool comes from gold or shields, but I suspect shields gives the more interesting opportunity cost.

Once you place the order for an improvement to be build, an "under construction" icon appears on the screen. This icon could either be a half-finished image of the improvement, or an animated worker. The improvement appears a few turns later, depending on the improvemnt/terrain (rails take longer than roads, mountain mines take longer than hill mines, undersea tunnels take ages and ages).

To prevent the idea of building a ridiculous stockpile of PW resources then splurging, I'd suggest one or both of the following:

- A negative interest on stockpiled PW resources. Say, it depreciates at 1% each turn. The first N points of stockpile shouldn't have this interest charge (N is the cost of your single most expensive PW project).
- You can only start a maximum of 1 PW action per city you control each turn.
(Posted by lajzar)

3.3.5 - Another Public Work System Idea

As one might imagine, the above system lends it very well to public works. Excess Shields in your national inventory will be used for this. Naturally either everything else in the game will be a bit cheaper or shields will be easier to come by (relative to cIIIv or cIIV).

Each public works project requires a certain number of shields to start. This number depends on the terrain and the tile improvement. Every item would have a base cost that is some multiple of 2. Roads, for instance, would cost 2 shields. This number divided by 2 is how many turns it would take to finish it if left to its own devices; each turn 2 shields are used to further the project along. If you want to rush a PW, then you can right-click or double-click on it to bring up an option window. This would allow you to cancel it (getting back all the shields that haven't been spent), or rush it. Rushing would cost gold, not shields however, as you already have the necessary materials to finish the project. 3 Gold or so per shield left should work well for this. Rushed PWs are done immediately, and you don't have to wait a turn to make use of them.

Forests, hills, and tundra would impose a 50% expense increase on PW, and mountains and glaciers would impose a 100% increase. This means they require more shields *and* take longer to finish (for only 2 shields of work are done each turn).

IMHO, there should be small and large rivers. Small Rivers should exist between squares and work as they did in cIIIv. Large rivers should be lik cIIv rivers and be on squares. Roads on Large Rivers are 200% more expensive to build and require construction.

Civilizations at war with you automatically raid PW squares of yours they enter. This destroys the project and gives the remaining shields to the enemy. (I am willing to discuss how this is exploitable, but I don't think it is).

All the standard improvements from cIIIv can be built, but a two new additions. One is the canal, which can be built on any square near a river or ocean/lake. This requires 50 shields base, and you can build another Canal near this one. This canal can only transport the smallest of ships, such as Caravels and Tiremes, which leads me into the other new feature. This is the doubling and tripling of roads, RRs, and Canals. This allows you to build larger, harder to destroy versions of these improvements and, in the case of canals, ones that can transport larger units. Graphically such larger items look like a wider road/canal, or a double/trippled RR track. A level 3 Canal can move any but the largest of ships (no Carriers, Modern Subs, or Modern Battleships). An upgrade to a "level two" item costs 50% more than the "level one" and is twice as hard to destroy by bombardment. An upgrade to a "level three" item costs 100% more than the base item (so 4 shields for a double road -> triple road on grasslands), and requires 3 times the effort to destroy by bombardment.
(Posted by) Drachasor

3.3.6 - PW features

• ability to do all of the current terrain improvements, inside city radii (possibly inside your own territory - more later)
• ability to (slowly) modify terrain height (ie mountains->hills or vice versa)
• advanced automation/Goal Seeking: ability to set a production goal and a food goal, and then the AI does the work of figuring out what improvements should be necessary where
• ability to tell the computer what you want the city to ultimately look like, ie what a fully developped city radius will look like
• ability to do things like "road to X" and "irrigate to here" -- asking the computer to automatically build a road from this city to another city, or to automatically build irrigation as needed to irrigate a certain square

3.3.7 - Basic Visual Interface(GUI)

This is where I think I have the biggest difficulty, both with my own suggestion and with others' that i've seen so far (and why I included this option). I see the optimal GUI being city-based -- ie, at the same screen that you now have for your city, but instead of just placing citizens on the tiles, you would also be able to right-click on the tile and select "Irrigate", or whatever.

* Definitely, *simplicity* is the watchword here. I don't want to see anything like simcity (sorry, laz ) ... As much as I enjoy the terrain development of Civ, and consider it vital, I do not consider simcity to be in the same category of games, and the added 'busy-ness' of a simcity-like pallette would not work for me. Click-and-select on the tiles themselves is good enough for me, and a few buttons that would open up dialogues for automation (or even checkboxes) -- checkbox for "Allow governor to manage terrain improvement", radio buttons for "focus on production" and "focus on growth" and "middle ground", button for a "Goal Seek" dialogue that allows you to set production and growth goals - and turns to those goals, thus allowing the AI to manage even your PW budget, *if you desire*.

My problem is this: How to allow development outside of cities, not to mention outside your own territory? I suppose you could allow terrain within 2 squares say to be visible and improveable but not workable in the city radius; or you could allow a simpler point-and-click (say ctrl-click) option for improving outside of city radius lands, on the main map (or even within city radius as well, as an alternate, additional option to the city window). What I don't want to see though is an "alternate map" that allows PW-ing (this is too much added complexity to me) or a pallette that pops up (or is always there) when you want to modify terrain.

I suppose that I'd suggest, as above, allowing ctrl-rightclick or something on any square that you have a presence (a unit, or territorial ownership -- let's just say any square than your FoW allows you to see) to bring up a little mouse menu with "Irrigate", "Road", "Mine", etc. as options, just like in the city window.
(Posted by snoopy369)

3.3.8 - "Payment" for improvements

I think that a pool is a dangerous idea, and *just* time gives too many questions about how to limit improvements. I'm going to suggest that each citizen of a city gives 1 "worker" per turn (not unit, but a currency) to that city's improvement, just by existing. Let's call it a 'property tax' for fun. This property tax is fixed, and not negotiable -- except that, just like with scientists and tax collectors, you can take that citizen off the normal square-usage duties, and assign them as a "Worker" (again not a unit, but this time as a Property Tax enhancer). This allows them to produce 1 or 2 additional "worker(s)" per turn.

Each turn, then, you may use up to the total "workers" in each city, to improve the terrain around that city. You would have an "improvement queue" of sorts, in that you would each turn order improvements done, and if you exceeded your "worker budget" (which would be shown on the screen somewhere) some improvements would be put off to next turn. If you don't use it all up, it's lost -- except that you can use each worker, at (half?) strength, on non-city improvements, or in another city. This would be automatic, except that perhaps a radio box in each city could be checked indicating "Top Priority" or "Low Priority" for that city - so all top priority cities would be filled first, then "normal" (including non-city terrain), then "low priority". I'd also say that the worker should be at lower strength still when outside your own territory -- maybe 2/3 inside territory, 1/3 outside, or something. Also perhaps an additional penalty when crossing oceans or some such (takes longer to relocate!)

This might be a bit overly complex, and not sure how exactly the GUI would work with this and not be overly complex, but it's what I think would be the best way to ensure an even balance of Terrain Improvement, without using unit workers. (And gives you some of the advantages of unit workers -- ie it allows you to take off population, essentially, to increase working on the TI's, and then put them back to work when not TI'ing.)
(Posted by snoopy369)

3.4 - Worker ideas

3.4.1 - Customizable Auto Workers

I love Civ3 its great. The only part that I find very tedious is the micro managing. Therefore to solve this problem I suggest there be customizable auto workers in civ4. By this I mean when you click on auto for a worker a menu pops up and you can tell it to do certain things on certain types of land. For example: Mine grasslands, mountains, and hills, irrigate plains and desserts, chop down forests and plant forests in tundra. This way I could feel comfortable using the auto workers, I don't want irrigation on grasslands in despo!
(Posted by Jerh9e1k5)

3.4.2 - Combination of Civ3 and SMAC type workers

I would like to see Workers have the full civ3 options, plus some advanced terraforming options later in the game -- ie, either SMAC style, or maybe not that far, but at minimum the ability to (eventually) recover from a really cruddy starting location filled with mountains... maybe the ability to raise/lower terrain to the next lower type (ie mountains->hills->grassland and back up) but with massive time involvement - and maybe adverse effects on pollution as well. (Perhaps a 48 worker-turn job from hill<->grassland and a 72 or even 96 worker-turn job from hill<->mountain)
(Posted by snoopy369)

3.4.3 - Workers and borders

I'd like to see workers be able to faster improve terrain inside a city radius (or inside your borders) versus outside borders. IE, if i'm building a slow road to china, so to speak, it should take longer than it does to build a road from Paris to Marseilles (if i'm the French), even for the same distance of road. Building on my own soil means easier to get supplies, cheaper equipment (pre-industrialization anyways ^^), etc. Building abroad means simply more time and expense (even in 'no man's land').
(Posted by snoopy369)

3.4.4 - Worker upgrades

I would like to see several upgrades, at minimum a 2 move points per turn upgrade later on (civ2 engineers), and probably at least 1 or 2 upgrades to worker speed (like the 1 we have now). 2 moves = ability to road quickly, which is a pretty useful wartime strategy, and relatively realistic (armies built roads on the fly, often in front of their advancing men and tanks, with steamrollers and such). 1 move limit prevents you from building *any* roads in less than 1 turn per square even if you're willing to commit dozens of workers to it.
(Posted by snoopy369)

3.4.5 - Different kids of workers

I'd like to see multiple types of workers -- ie specialists -- if it's possible without too much complexity being added. That part i'm not so sure about, however. "Farmers" that are normal workers but can build a 'farm' which is a 2x irrigation improvement for example (and cost 50% more to build); "Miners" that can build a better mine, or build a mine faster; perhaps "Road Workers", which move like they're always on a road (solving my "army roads" problem from above) or have 2mpt or something.
(Posted by snoopy369)

specialists would be confined to the radius of the city that built them, and when they have done all they can, they could become standard workers and be able to go wherever they want. Maybe they would be confined to a region/ province/ frontier instead of a city radius.
(Posted by Brent)

3.4.6 - Automation options for workers

Same as C3C definitely, the "Auto build trade", "Auto clean pollution", etc. are VERY useful (especially the latter) to lowering the 'tedium', if you don't feel like being tedious (so to speak ^^). Even further in the "ctrl-key-and-click" concept of worker manipulation would be good -- ie, pressing ctrl-I and then click on a square to Irrigate to that square (I think this may be possible now, don't remember) including building irrigation up from a far away river if need be, but for all of the improvement types. (Ctrl-M would mean "go to this square and mine it", or some other key combo since ctrl-M right now means clear the screen for the map).
(Posted by snoopy369)

C3C plus: distinction between homeland roads and roads to rivals; orders which apply to your entire group of workers, like Governor options, with often, sometimes or never, including Colony To; Prepare future city radii either in general, along roads in general, or along specific road.
(Posted by Brent)

4 - Transportation over the map

4.1 - Railroads

4.1.1 - Movement dependable on tech

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.
(Posted By Torkkeli)

4.1.2 - Infinite movement

4.1.2.1 - Some units having infinite movement

How about keeping infinite rail movement, but restricting the number of units that can take advantage of it? City improvements and technologies could increase this limit.
(Posted by ixnay)

4.1.2.2 - Infinite movents as option in the editor

I'd still like infinite movement as an option in the editor. IIRC many C2 games used it very innovatively (like the wormhole in the DS9 scenario).
(Posted by skywalker)

4.1.2.3 - More diversity in movement rates

If infinite rail movement is removed, I'd like to suggest a finer approach overall:

Right now we have movement over terrain (1 for 1 or less on rough terrain), movement over roads (3 for 1) and movement over railroads (infinity for 0). This seems a little coarse.

In particular, "roads != roads". The Roman roads were unsurpassed until modern times, I believe. And the US interstate system virtually obsolesces (is that a word?) the rail.

We could have no roads, basic roads, Roman-type roads, rails and highways. A compelling set of multipliers might be 1, 2, 4, 6 and 8. (Maybe tweak those last two?)
(Posted by okblacke)

4.1.3 - Penalty for railroad use

Keep unlimited movement, but add a 1 turn embarking/disembarking penalty for railroad use. If you want to get on a railroad, you can embark and go to your destination all in one turn. But in order to get off you need to wait till your next turn.

A corrolary to this is that you can only embark/dismbark at a city or worker built "train depot". Also if your unit is in a city at the end of its turn, it can be used for defense. But if you're waiting at a train depot, you can't defend with units waiting to disembark. If that train depot tile falls, the depot is destroyed and your units are automatically disembarked with severe damage.
(Posted by wrylachlan)

4.1.4 - Easy solution for railroad problems?

Remove the tile production boost from railroads, remove infinite movement (say, 1/5th movement cost... a tank can move ten tiles), and add an upkeep to rail tiles.

You have to link up your empire to facilitat defense, but you'll do so carefully and without waste, to avoid the added upkeep.
(Posted by Fosse)

4.1.5 - The Uglies

That's very similar to the idea I proposed on page 2 about rail construction. Give an overall percentage production bonus for being connected instead of a per tile bonus. In order to make it work you need a per tile upkeep, and a rule of diminished return for each rail-road - the first connection gives a 5% bonus, the second only 3%, the third 1% (which might be less than the cost of upkeep).

To expand on this, to totally prevent the uglies, disallow the building of single tile rail-roads. Instead workers can only build RR between two cities(or a city and a colony).
(Posted by wrylachlan)

4.1.6 - Infrastructure factor

My idea is to calculate an infrastructure factor and use that for boosting trade / productivity in the cities connected. For instance: if all cities are connected by roads you can gain a 50% boost to trade. However, until all cities are connected you will only get a fraction in the cities connected based on cities connected/all cities in your civ.

The same for rails where you could boost production the same way and add to trade as well.

As airports are part of the trade network they could give a boost too, but I think only if they are in cities of a certain size - again you don't see airports in every city in real civs.

If your civ is on several isles / continents you would need a port to connect the parts to the trade network / infrastructure.
(Posted by lost viking

4.1.7 - Max production in road/rail squares

Normally you would not be able to use land both for roads/rails and farming/production, so there could be a penalty for building a road/rail in a tile, say that tile can max produce one food/one shield. That way you would have to be more careful planning the infrastructure. (I guess you could say you pay for upkeeping that way).
(Posted by lost viking

4.1.8 - RR and roads not being useful for productiuon & commerce

Have roads and railroads stop being useful for production and commerce. Several levels of irrigation and mining could do the job for production. And I strongly believe the commerce model of Civ1 should be overhauled, with commerce coming, say, from your population, your city improvements, and the intensity of your connection with the rest of the world, rather than simply from how many roads there are.
(Posted by Spiffor)

4.2 - Railroads/Roads

This is a huge pet peeve of mine and I think an easy fix. Why aren't there roads and railroads across 100% of the land in real life? Because they cost money to upkeep. Why do we have them at all? Because they provide an ecomic benefit in being able to get from place to place, and that benefit offsets their cost. But there is a law of diminishing returns where after you have one RR between two cities, the second costs more than its economic benefit.

How this translates to Civ is to give Roads and RR's an upkeep. Then make their economic benefit dependant on the number of nearby cities they have a direct line to - maybe a 5% commerce bonus for the first one, 4% for the next, etc. etc. That way a line directly from city A to B might cost 5 gold, but give you 8 for a net of 3, from A to C nets 2, A to D nets 1, A to E is a wash, and anything after that is a loosing proposition.
(Posted by wrylachlan)

I would personally be happy if they do any-or all-of the following things:

1) Bring back the civ1 system of deducting 1mp for every city a unit passes through when travelling via rail-but extend it to moving into forts, outposts and airbases as well!

2) Give a limit to the number of units which can pass through a RR square at any one time-i.e. a stack limit. This stack limit could also apply to other terrain types-like mountains hills and rivers.

3) Introduce a move-combat-move phase for each turn. i.e. have each player move its units, then have all combats resolved-by theatre-then allow a follow-up movement phase. This will allow players to respond to invasions IF they are within range of the invading force (think Harold at the Battle of Stamford Bridge still being able to get his forces back down to Hastings to meet William-in Civ3, such a tactic is currently impossible, but shouldn't be!)

Anyway, if these ideas were implemented, then I would have NO objection-AT ALL-to the concept of infinite RR movement.
(Posted by The_Aussie_Lurker)

4.3 - 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.
(Posted By Brent)

4.4 - 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.
(Posted By Sandman)

4.5 - River Transportation

Having rivers between tiles for strategic importance is pretty cool. On the other hand having the early scouts travel along rivers was pretty cool too. How to Reconcile these two things? This one's a little complicated to explain, but easy to see if maybe someone could do a mock up for me... anyhoo... The rivers exist between the land tiles and act just like they do in CIV3 in terms of a movement penalty to cross plus defense bonuses, etc. However a unit can "embark" on the river. What this does is it costs one movement point, and shifts the grid a half square over and down which puts the river at the center of the square from the point of view of the unit. The unit can then enjoy the improved movement of the river and "disembark" when it wants to return to land.
(Posted by wrylachlan)

Let's finally have navigable rivers.
(Posted by Fosse)

4.6 - Loading/unloading from ships

There should be a landing movement penalty which Marines (or any other amphibious-flagged unit) is immune to. Additionally Wheeled units either can't land except in cities or colonies, or get a heavier penalty outside of cities or colonies. The penalty itself can be a flat 1 turn penalty or a variable turn penalty based on the terrain (I favor this option).
(Posted by wrylachlan)

4.7 - Scouts/Outposts

Make visibility more important by increasing the sight range of scouts and outposts in relation to the terrain. Regular units get 2x vision on hills, 3x on mountains. Scouts/Outposts should get 2.5x, 4x. This would make Scouts/Outposts much more tactically valuable.

This would allow further differentiation of units based on their ability to overcome the obstacle - A special Forces unit that can climb cliffs, or a Mountain warrior that can travel on mountains that are totally impassable to other units.

Maybe there are mountains that only workers can get to, so to cross them with other units you MUST build a road.
(Posted by wrylachlan)

4.8 - Rapid transport systems

• No production bonus from transport tile improvements. they only make you more mobile.
• Roads give 1/3 move cost.
• Modern highways give 1/5 move cost
• Airports, harbours, and Rail Depots act as rapid transport systems. They require upkeep, and for an additional fee, units can be transported between them. This transport works similar to civ 2 airports.
• Rail depots require that both cities be connected by road or highway.
• Harbours require that both cities be within X tiles of each other based on sea movement, with X increasing with certain techs.
• Airports require that both cities be within X tiles of each other based on direct travel, with X increasing with certain techs.
• All 3 require that both cities have the appropriate improvement.
• The gold cost varies by transport type (air is expensive, sea is cheap), and by unit weight (tanks are expensive, diplomats are cheap).

4.9 - Trains

Hey, I just thought of something; how about having a "train" unit ? that works like a transport. That allows loading/unloading up to 100 units in a single turn, and has a limited movement of say 10 railroaded tiles per turn ?
(Posted by Pizza)

4.10 - Road quality

How about having a road quality ? The better the road is, the more it cost to maintain. But you can build roads everywhere....
(Posted by Pizza)

5 - Cities

5.1 - City sprawl

City sprawl: when cities reach a certain pop, they automatically sprawl to adjacent tiles.
(Posted by J-S)

5.2 - Allow city radius to expand none concentrically

perhaps allowing city radius to expand none concentrically..

that is if two citys overlap , allow one city to utilise a sqaure not in its radius but still concuurent with the city, upto the maximum of the 21 squares allowed

maybe allow the player to select it as the city grows.. but maybe time consuming a little bit of extra micromanaging.. Otherwise the city governor can make the call and just expand in direction he wants.. This is olny for overlapping citys, normally the concentric rings apply
(Posted by Rasputin)

5.3 - More than one citizen per tile

I'd like to see a possiblity to put more than one citizen on a tile in the city window. The second worker would produce one less of each resource than the first worker, the third one less again...

This would make cities bigger than size 20 worth having, or if a city has one GREAT tile, and a load of poor tiles, then the city can concentrate its workforce in one place.
(Posted by Jamski)

5.4 - Buttons maximize citizen out-put

Have buttons that instantly maximizes city workers for food/commerce/production/science/happiness. Basically, it would make sure the minimum food/happiness requirement is met, and then automatically places worker on the correct tiles/specialist slots.
(Posted by hexagonian)

5.5 - Sorrounding terrain affecting building's cost

The number of sides a city has facing the sea should give it a discount on the cost of city walls, and an increase in the cost of a coastal fortress.

A city with three sides facing the sea should pay 5/8 of what a fully land-locked city has to pay for city walls. A city with only one side facing the land, on a near island, should pay only 1/8.
(Posted by Sandman)

5.6 - River affecting cities more than now

5.6.1 - River trade

Each city on the banks of a river should get +1 trade for each other city on that river.
(Posted by Sandman)

5.6.2 - Sea improvements on river cities near coast

Cities that are only one square away from the coast, and are on a river that leads to that coast should be able to build sea improvements.
(Posted by Sandman)

5.7 - Allow building cities on more terrain types

Allow us to build cities, roads and mines on mountains! At least allow us to build them in the modern era.
(DarkCloud)

5.8 - Change the concept of city radius

Change the concept of "city radius" to match up with road and transportation technology. Right now, whether it's 4,000 BC and you don't even have The Wheel, or it's 2150 AD and you have satellites and spaceships, a city works its two-square radius.

Well, what if a city could work any square within one-half turn's worth of travel? (Half to get out there, half to get back.) This would be a combination of roads, tech and resources. Using the 1, 2, 4, 6 and 8 multipliers:

In stone-age times, it would kill ICS. Before you could get much use out of a new city, it would have to be connected at least to its surroundings. Horses and The Wheel would increase city radius to one. (You might need other non-combat type animal resources, though, like mules, camels and elephants.)

Roman roads would increase the radius to 2. You'd get a lot of closely placed cities, too, at least until the industrial age.

Rails would increase radius to three.

Highways would increase the radius to a whopping four. (Using SoCal as an example, it has been said that a lot of the robustness and resilience of that economy has to do with the fact that workers can move around to where the work is without resettling.)
(Posted by okblacke)

6 - Pollution

6.1 - Pollution affecting production & income

I would like to see some implementation of pollution, having said that, I do agree that the current model is annoying and little to gameplay. How about making it so that it affects production and income. (people are more often sic, blahblahblah) IE avertain production will be last due to pollution (could be on a wordwide level with cities producing most pollution being affected more ).

6.2 - Implement it differently

6.2.1 - Trees should have an impact

pollution: trees really should reduce pollution!
(Posted by alva)

6.2.2 - 3 types of pollution

On the topic of pollution, my idea involves 3 types: (normal) pollution, radiation, and air pollution.

Normal Pollution would be similar to the pollution we have now. Certain city and/or tile improvements would increase the odds of new pollution appearing in a random tile around the city. The affected tile would have its productivity cut in half (rounded down?). Any cities with a polluted tile in it's radius would suffer adverse effects, including increased unhappiness and reduced health (possibly among other things). Global warming would not be caused by normal pollution.

Radiation would come from nuclear weapons and accidents at nuclear plants. Affected tiles would become unworkable. It would take workers several times longer to clean up radiation than normal pollution. Additional effects would be similar to those associated with normal pollution, except they would be more severe.

Air pollution would cause no visible pollution on the map. Instead, it would contribute to effects such as global warming, reduced health, etc. It would be produced by population and certain city imrovements. Optionally, it could also decrease food production in the city (in a manner similar to corruption/waste - only not as severe) depending on the amount of air pollution in the city. Forests and jungles could decrease the effects of air pollution.
(Posted by Xorbon)

6.3 - Appearance

Oh, and about pollution - its penalty should not occur on the same turn the pollution occurs (so I still work the tile during the beginning of the turn it appears, but not at the beginning of the next turn).

This is because cities that are balance food-wise can starve slowly from pollution (because each time the pollution occurs, a bit of food is lost from the granary which isn't replaced until the city loses and then gains a pop point).
(Posted by Kucinich)

6.4 - Levels of pollution

A thought on pollution. What if it wasn't all or nothing like now. Rather it had scales. So a square could be lightly polluted and just be losing a little food, and commerce and maybe an industrial resource. Or moderately polluted and lose more. Or heavily polluted and lose everything.

Polluted squares would have a higher chance of becoming more polluted than non-polluted squares. The more pollution, the longer to clean up. But only if one failed to clean up pollution would it get to the point of totally losing the use of a square.

It would make pollution less annoying. It could also be made more realistic by having the higher levels of pollution only coming from industrial sources, and the lowest being generated by population and industry. Thus pollution could appear earlier in its lowest forms.
(Posted by Bleyn)

6.5 - Pollution levels

pollution
radiation
zerg creep
undead blight
fungus

Yeah, I want the system to be flexible enough to allow any of these. Only nukes or malfunctionaing reactors should produce radiation. Not sure how the others could be defined, but I'd love to see them implemented.
(posted by lajzar)

7 - Mini-map

7.1 - Flattened mini-map

One thing which is important is to have a flattened mini-map, so you can see the whole world at once.
(Posted by Sandman)

8 - Climate and weather

8.1 - Climate in the game

Basically ,the game should model in terms of climate:

• Sunspot Numbers (These seem to be cyclical and effect the temperature on the earth. A lot of sunspots means a very warm year, very few sunspots mean a very cold year)
• Weather Patterns (These shift from year to year "el nino", "la nina", etc. and can make an arid place wet and a wet place arid... they are currently playing havoc with China, India and the US)
• Sea Levels
• Irrigation Altering Climate (In lands around irrigate areas, the squares should gradually alter and perhaps become more desert
• Desertification deserts should expand and contract
• Glacierification Perhaps there should be a new impassable terrain type (Glacier) that can expand, contract based upon global temperatures.

These ideas would be even better for Alpha Centauri II and it's global environment control wonder of the world
(Posted by DarkCloud)

Conclusion

This subject is obviously seem as important, lots of discussion has gone into it, and the single most important thing for people seems to be railroads.

Respectfully compiled by - Nikolai
Special thanks to: Asmodean, DarkCloud