Civ 4 - the list of ideas for Firaxis

[Shogun Gunner]

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]

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]

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]

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

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]

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


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]

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]

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]

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.

but they are fun when there are just 10 of them

that is why the worker model needs reworked so that the optimum number never raises above 15

I think a real problem with civ is that more equals better and so you just get more and moreuntil it is hard to manage everything

Jon Miller

[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.

[MrFun]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

COMBAT

From TechWins :

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.