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I'm not sure in which list it goes, so I'll just state my point.
Its based on a post by Velocrix (iirc) that was referred to in one of the recent threads.
Civ III had very little stuff to do besides warfare that were fun. And warfare was made unfun in latter parts of the game.
I realized that the whole point of the game, and the reason its fun, is that you constatly have stuff to do and choose. Civ III had less of that - it was somewhat too streamlined. It had too little "sub-missions":
The caravan was killed. Trade was now streamlined through the (sadly poor and unfun) diplomacy menu. No longer will you take on the great journeys of marko polo. Now its point and click... where's the fun? So people traded special resources - but that was much less fun. All you had to do is built a road - which is a good mission, but not quite the same as making a "journey".
The spy unit was killed. All spy missions moved to a screen that was difficult to access (click on the small star under the name near the shadow over the map..) and it cost a fortune. In my games, spies had very large roles both in regular warfare and in covert operations against my supposed allies. Wouldn't want them to reach a ground-breaking technology first, now would I?
Things like sending caravans or explorers (as well as technology, wonder and space races) give players interesting mini-goals to complete.
But the problem is, we want to reduce the tinkering in the latter parts of the game, where you'd eventually have tons of caravans and tons of spies, and tons of workers....
So why not change models in mid game?
Lets suppose you use caravans in the early ages, and once you go to industrial age (or discover railroad or what ever), caravans are made obsolete, and trade moves to a streamlined diplomacy option.
You start the game with spies, but after the discovery of say, communism, you build a small-wonder which replaces spies with a streamlined "spy center".
You start the game with workers as the only means to build improvements, and in the mid game - it changes to the CtP model (improvement workshop, which can build anywhere in your empire). And then you have a special unit "warfare engineer" which has the ability to build roads and rails and forts in enemy territory, and has X defense. This would give a great opportunity for tactical play, such as quickly building a road to the enemy capital and sending in your troops in a blitz.
This could also be used for other things such as fixed governments, versus a SMAC type social model.
I think this would both be fun, and give the player a feeling of "technology jumps" while advancing through the ages - and would solve alot of micromanagement by eliminating many chores mid game, but not having the early game "too-streamlined".
Back to the mini goals - I think that as someone suggested in another topic, Civ could gain from making some improvements or technologies be dependant of more things than just a tech tree and resources.
For instance, build X granaries to get some bonus / mini-wonder / technology / unit / age advancement. This would instantly create some new mini-goals.
I think that things like religion, culture and even some concept of immigration, wuold provide strong incentives towards building a medium sized empire with good strong cities, instead of a 1 size city sprawl with a barraks and a wall.
The game should work more on incentives than punishment (high corruption, and waste).
Make the silly and fun lists compiled (most advanced nation, most educated nation, best cities) mean something, by offering a reward to the leader of such a list.
This would give people stuff to aspire towards. Just like WLTKD and golden ages.
Reflecting back, this is a rather bad post (many ideas, little order, no good direct message).
So my ideas are:
1. Bring back more stuff to do (caravans, spies... whatever)
2. Give us more goals (lists, pre-requesists other than tech and resources)
3. Make pretty criteria mean stuff (best city, most advanced empire)
4. Change models mid-game (will both reward you, and streamline and remove the threat of micromanagement).
ideas?
Its based on a post by Velocrix (iirc) that was referred to in one of the recent threads.
Civ III had very little stuff to do besides warfare that were fun. And warfare was made unfun in latter parts of the game.
I realized that the whole point of the game, and the reason its fun, is that you constatly have stuff to do and choose. Civ III had less of that - it was somewhat too streamlined. It had too little "sub-missions":
The caravan was killed. Trade was now streamlined through the (sadly poor and unfun) diplomacy menu. No longer will you take on the great journeys of marko polo. Now its point and click... where's the fun? So people traded special resources - but that was much less fun. All you had to do is built a road - which is a good mission, but not quite the same as making a "journey".
The spy unit was killed. All spy missions moved to a screen that was difficult to access (click on the small star under the name near the shadow over the map..) and it cost a fortune. In my games, spies had very large roles both in regular warfare and in covert operations against my supposed allies. Wouldn't want them to reach a ground-breaking technology first, now would I?
Things like sending caravans or explorers (as well as technology, wonder and space races) give players interesting mini-goals to complete.
But the problem is, we want to reduce the tinkering in the latter parts of the game, where you'd eventually have tons of caravans and tons of spies, and tons of workers....
So why not change models in mid game?
Lets suppose you use caravans in the early ages, and once you go to industrial age (or discover railroad or what ever), caravans are made obsolete, and trade moves to a streamlined diplomacy option.
You start the game with spies, but after the discovery of say, communism, you build a small-wonder which replaces spies with a streamlined "spy center".
You start the game with workers as the only means to build improvements, and in the mid game - it changes to the CtP model (improvement workshop, which can build anywhere in your empire). And then you have a special unit "warfare engineer" which has the ability to build roads and rails and forts in enemy territory, and has X defense. This would give a great opportunity for tactical play, such as quickly building a road to the enemy capital and sending in your troops in a blitz.
This could also be used for other things such as fixed governments, versus a SMAC type social model.
I think this would both be fun, and give the player a feeling of "technology jumps" while advancing through the ages - and would solve alot of micromanagement by eliminating many chores mid game, but not having the early game "too-streamlined".
Back to the mini goals - I think that as someone suggested in another topic, Civ could gain from making some improvements or technologies be dependant of more things than just a tech tree and resources.
For instance, build X granaries to get some bonus / mini-wonder / technology / unit / age advancement. This would instantly create some new mini-goals.
I think that things like religion, culture and even some concept of immigration, wuold provide strong incentives towards building a medium sized empire with good strong cities, instead of a 1 size city sprawl with a barraks and a wall.
The game should work more on incentives than punishment (high corruption, and waste).
Make the silly and fun lists compiled (most advanced nation, most educated nation, best cities) mean something, by offering a reward to the leader of such a list.
This would give people stuff to aspire towards. Just like WLTKD and golden ages.
Reflecting back, this is a rather bad post (many ideas, little order, no good direct message).
So my ideas are:
1. Bring back more stuff to do (caravans, spies... whatever)
2. Give us more goals (lists, pre-requesists other than tech and resources)
3. Make pretty criteria mean stuff (best city, most advanced empire)
4. Change models mid-game (will both reward you, and streamline and remove the threat of micromanagement).
ideas?
This is why I want the game to either go on for a bit longer with additional tasks and cool stuff or to end when it stops being fun, ie when the game hits modern age. In fact this should be an option. To choose "Long boring game" or "short funny game". I don´t know if this has been discussed earlier, I´ll have to check the appropriate threads. 
In other words, make Civ4 the improvement to Civ2 that Civ3 should have been.
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