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for those who care to hear them. 
I've waited a while to post my thoughts because I wanted to get a bunch of games under my belt ebfore I said anything. I do think Civ 4 is an excellent game. The team at Firaxis have tried very hard and it shows.
I'm going to phrase this as if I were talking to the staff at firaxis and giving them my suggestions. Everyone should focus on the general 'jist' of my suggestions and not hte actual values (for eg. +2 hp, or +10% speed) proposed.
COMBAT:
As everyone else has mentioned earlier, combat is a great improvement so I wont dwell on that too much. In particular though, I loved how strategic my wars have become. I loved it when I was forced to declare war to gain an oil resource. I loved it that I could create complex combinations of forces tha t more closely resembled armies. I loved how I could cripple my enemies by using blitzkreig to deprive them of important resources and then pick and choose my battles to wear down their armies through attrition.
I felt the navies in the game were a bit crippled. Even expensive war machines like battleships seemed to only help in taking the odd coastal cities and defending my coasts. The 3 jets allowed on a carrier scarcely pack a punch and are pretty serve as an air defense for the naval task force. However, the only time I would need the air defense is when my task force were away from my own cities. But why would I move my entire naval task force if the only thing that accomplishes is bombarding city defenses. I would instead just send a stack of destroyers and battleships with my transport and there is no longer a need for a carrier or a submarine. Infact I can hardly come up with a decent use for a fleet of submarines. I think a good way to make navies more useful and important in the game is by allowing them to bombard units to upto half strength (much like bombers) upto 2 tiles inland (including units stationed inside cities). This may make the game more complicated for the AI, but in terms of game dynamics, I do think this would make navies much more valuable. Navies would be necessary to defend your coasts, not just from transports carrying troops... and navies would be a great asset in launching an attack against any enemy.. especially since the battleship can provide support through bombardment. This bombard capability could be used for defense by a coastal city as well. Submarines could be strengthened so that even though they cannot bombard they are actually usefull in naval battles because they have a +50% bonus against battleships and carriers since battleships cant see them. This would make submarines important defensive and offensive weapons. In short I'm trying to suggest a way in which the naval units are more relevant and interdependant similar to the way in which land units are.
I also liked Yin's idea of creating supply wagons. These may make the game a bit more complicated, but they would add a whole new element of strategy. Supposing every army needed to be supplied with a supply wagon unit that was logically the equivalent of army fuel. You could create a supply wagon with for examply 20 points, and i would loose 1 point for every unit that spends its time healing for a turn. It could also be made to loose 1 point every turn the supply wagon remains in enemy territory, until the points hit 0, at which point the supply unit ceases to exist and supply the army. All units in enemy territory without a supply unit could loose maybe 2% of their health a turn and be unable to heal. This would add a whole new strategic element to wars since we would not just go marching in and grab territory any which way we pleased, but rather we'd have to worry a bout our supply lines and the defense of our supply wagons coming in to defend our armies. Note how this would actually favour the defender since he could use a fast unit like cavalry or modern armor to take out slow moving supply units. The defender himself would not have to worry about supply units since he would be within his own cultural borders. Supply units would start out cheap in the early game and progressively grow more expensive to keep up with the increasing cost of the modern units.
RELIGION:
I like the way the religion system has been implemented and can understand that the team at firaxis didn't want to stir a hornets nest by giving characteristics to a religion. But I think they could create a 'flavor' to each religion without being offensive to the vast majority of the people, by only having different national religions give positive bonuses. So for instance,if your national religion is christianity it would give +1 happiness in each city or +1 gold. Judaism would give +25% worker speed. Islam would give +10% productivity or food, Budhdism would give +1 health, confucianism would give +2 experience points. etc.. This added bonus could be balanced by a negative effect of having multiple religions in each city. (or a religion different from your national religion) For instance, they would be more likely to revolt to join a neighboring civ with the same religion. Or have a compound effect on unhappiness... meaning that if there is any unhappiness or unhealthiness in the city, the different religion present in the city would (for example) double the effect .. Perhaps another possibility could be commerce 'lost' to the civ that founded the religion provided it has a shrine. This would increase the significance of religion, and make choosing and avoiding religions a more integral part of the game strategy.
WORKERS:
I've always been a big fan of the CTP style public works system and preffered it over the tedious worker (That likes to destroy improvemens I've built). I know this isn't happening since I'm in a minority, bu I wanted to speak my mind and make my vote in favour for PW.
END GAME:
This may or may not be covered with an expansion pack later on, but I'd really like the option of continuing the game beyong 2050ad. And I dont mean by just researching future techs. I would like the ability to go on and research nanotechnology. Bionics, Antigravity, etc. and have those futre technologies build related units, improvements and buildings. Maybe let the game go on till 2300 AD. I know that this would have little effect on the over all game play, except (And this is why I would like it) extend the need to keep researching. I often find myself slowing down my research when I get MAs and MIs around the 1950s. The rest of the game I keep getting future techs and I know I've researched all there is worth researching.
SPACE VICTORY:
A lot of people have complained about this win condition and how crudely it has been implemented. There is nothing wrong with its concept, just with the way its been executed. I wont repeat suggestions here that have been repeated a thousand times before.
DIPLOMACY:
I think the diplomacy is a significant improvement over previous versions and I absolutely love it.
However, I miss my old diplomat!
Seriously though, I think a diplomat unit should be thrown in on top of the existing diplomacy system. The diplomat would serve the sole purpose of establishing an embassy in the other civilizations capital city(so you'd have to have open borders first) The embassy would provide us with nice tidbits of information about the civ (rankings of GNP, Approval rating, size of army, etc.), give us a +1 likability for establishing an embassy with them, and be a pre-requisite for (again for example) defensive pacts/permanent alliances, and resource sharing.
POWER:
I love that power has been included in the game, but I feel that it hasn' been given enough importance. Its optional the way it is right now.. but I think it should be made more important to the game as well. The lack of power in a city 10 turns after it has been discovered, shoul provide -1 happiness. (or maybe turn it around and have it such that the presence of power in a city creates +1 happiness). Also, cities without power should not be able to make improvements such as airports, and recycling centers.
Hope some of these suggestions are helpful.
I've waited a while to post my thoughts because I wanted to get a bunch of games under my belt ebfore I said anything. I do think Civ 4 is an excellent game. The team at Firaxis have tried very hard and it shows.
I'm going to phrase this as if I were talking to the staff at firaxis and giving them my suggestions. Everyone should focus on the general 'jist' of my suggestions and not hte actual values (for eg. +2 hp, or +10% speed) proposed.
COMBAT:
As everyone else has mentioned earlier, combat is a great improvement so I wont dwell on that too much. In particular though, I loved how strategic my wars have become. I loved it when I was forced to declare war to gain an oil resource. I loved it that I could create complex combinations of forces tha t more closely resembled armies. I loved how I could cripple my enemies by using blitzkreig to deprive them of important resources and then pick and choose my battles to wear down their armies through attrition.
I felt the navies in the game were a bit crippled. Even expensive war machines like battleships seemed to only help in taking the odd coastal cities and defending my coasts. The 3 jets allowed on a carrier scarcely pack a punch and are pretty serve as an air defense for the naval task force. However, the only time I would need the air defense is when my task force were away from my own cities. But why would I move my entire naval task force if the only thing that accomplishes is bombarding city defenses. I would instead just send a stack of destroyers and battleships with my transport and there is no longer a need for a carrier or a submarine. Infact I can hardly come up with a decent use for a fleet of submarines. I think a good way to make navies more useful and important in the game is by allowing them to bombard units to upto half strength (much like bombers) upto 2 tiles inland (including units stationed inside cities). This may make the game more complicated for the AI, but in terms of game dynamics, I do think this would make navies much more valuable. Navies would be necessary to defend your coasts, not just from transports carrying troops... and navies would be a great asset in launching an attack against any enemy.. especially since the battleship can provide support through bombardment. This bombard capability could be used for defense by a coastal city as well. Submarines could be strengthened so that even though they cannot bombard they are actually usefull in naval battles because they have a +50% bonus against battleships and carriers since battleships cant see them. This would make submarines important defensive and offensive weapons. In short I'm trying to suggest a way in which the naval units are more relevant and interdependant similar to the way in which land units are.
I also liked Yin's idea of creating supply wagons. These may make the game a bit more complicated, but they would add a whole new element of strategy. Supposing every army needed to be supplied with a supply wagon unit that was logically the equivalent of army fuel. You could create a supply wagon with for examply 20 points, and i would loose 1 point for every unit that spends its time healing for a turn. It could also be made to loose 1 point every turn the supply wagon remains in enemy territory, until the points hit 0, at which point the supply unit ceases to exist and supply the army. All units in enemy territory without a supply unit could loose maybe 2% of their health a turn and be unable to heal. This would add a whole new strategic element to wars since we would not just go marching in and grab territory any which way we pleased, but rather we'd have to worry a bout our supply lines and the defense of our supply wagons coming in to defend our armies. Note how this would actually favour the defender since he could use a fast unit like cavalry or modern armor to take out slow moving supply units. The defender himself would not have to worry about supply units since he would be within his own cultural borders. Supply units would start out cheap in the early game and progressively grow more expensive to keep up with the increasing cost of the modern units.
RELIGION:
I like the way the religion system has been implemented and can understand that the team at firaxis didn't want to stir a hornets nest by giving characteristics to a religion. But I think they could create a 'flavor' to each religion without being offensive to the vast majority of the people, by only having different national religions give positive bonuses. So for instance,if your national religion is christianity it would give +1 happiness in each city or +1 gold. Judaism would give +25% worker speed. Islam would give +10% productivity or food, Budhdism would give +1 health, confucianism would give +2 experience points. etc.. This added bonus could be balanced by a negative effect of having multiple religions in each city. (or a religion different from your national religion) For instance, they would be more likely to revolt to join a neighboring civ with the same religion. Or have a compound effect on unhappiness... meaning that if there is any unhappiness or unhealthiness in the city, the different religion present in the city would (for example) double the effect .. Perhaps another possibility could be commerce 'lost' to the civ that founded the religion provided it has a shrine. This would increase the significance of religion, and make choosing and avoiding religions a more integral part of the game strategy.
WORKERS:
I've always been a big fan of the CTP style public works system and preffered it over the tedious worker (That likes to destroy improvemens I've built). I know this isn't happening since I'm in a minority, bu I wanted to speak my mind and make my vote in favour for PW.
END GAME:
This may or may not be covered with an expansion pack later on, but I'd really like the option of continuing the game beyong 2050ad. And I dont mean by just researching future techs. I would like the ability to go on and research nanotechnology. Bionics, Antigravity, etc. and have those futre technologies build related units, improvements and buildings. Maybe let the game go on till 2300 AD. I know that this would have little effect on the over all game play, except (And this is why I would like it) extend the need to keep researching. I often find myself slowing down my research when I get MAs and MIs around the 1950s. The rest of the game I keep getting future techs and I know I've researched all there is worth researching.
SPACE VICTORY:
A lot of people have complained about this win condition and how crudely it has been implemented. There is nothing wrong with its concept, just with the way its been executed. I wont repeat suggestions here that have been repeated a thousand times before.
DIPLOMACY:
I think the diplomacy is a significant improvement over previous versions and I absolutely love it.
However, I miss my old diplomat!
Seriously though, I think a diplomat unit should be thrown in on top of the existing diplomacy system. The diplomat would serve the sole purpose of establishing an embassy in the other civilizations capital city(so you'd have to have open borders first) The embassy would provide us with nice tidbits of information about the civ (rankings of GNP, Approval rating, size of army, etc.), give us a +1 likability for establishing an embassy with them, and be a pre-requisite for (again for example) defensive pacts/permanent alliances, and resource sharing. POWER:
I love that power has been included in the game, but I feel that it hasn' been given enough importance. Its optional the way it is right now.. but I think it should be made more important to the game as well. The lack of power in a city 10 turns after it has been discovered, shoul provide -1 happiness. (or maybe turn it around and have it such that the presence of power in a city creates +1 happiness). Also, cities without power should not be able to make improvements such as airports, and recycling centers.
Hope some of these suggestions are helpful.