Some ideas for the expansion

[Rook]

I think the old palace feature from the previous Civ games needs a revisit. Instead of you adding a new feature to your palace, instead the game shows you a scene from your capital city. In the background, you will see your wonders as built in that city. The techs you have discovered would be evident. Such as, if you have steel, you would see taller buildings or sky scrapers. If you have the internal combustion engine, cars will fill the streets. Jets or planes can fly by if you have them invented. There can be a man and woman standing to the side wearing clothes of the period you are currently in. Perhaps if you have the printing press, the man will have a folded newspaper under his arm. There's so much you can do with this concept and it wouldn't be hard to impliment either. Unlike the palace, there would actually be some interest to view the scene every once in awhile.

[jmp]

While I too don't want to see a return of Civ1/2 style caravans, the trade/resource system needs a bit of reworking.

It always bothered me that a single resource or luxury unit is automatically enough to provide its benefit over the entire civ. If I take over all of the cities of two of my rivals, it will still take only one unit of gems, spices, or whatever to provide the benefit to all of my cities. This is even more unrealistic with some of the resources, notably oil. Wars have been fought because larger nations consume more oil. (There are other factors, but that's a start.)

What if resources only served the needs of some number of population points, or some amount of production? If I have 45% of the world's population spread over half the globe, I might need more than a single oil well to supply all the oil I need. I might need more than one source of iron if I have 15 cities producing tanks to support the war I'm waging. I'm not suggesting that we go to a hyper-realistic model where a mine provides x tons of iron and a tank needs y tons, but the idea that a source--once tapped-- is limitless is somewhat oversimplified.

The idea of quantities of food production is handled effortlessly and simply. Perhaps there's a way to quantify resources a bit more carefully, without making the game un-fun.

Which brings me to food trading, which was one of the nice features of the old style of trade. I liked being able to take food from a city with an overabundance, and send it to a city that would be a production powerhouse, if only it could get more food. It certainly happens in the real world. Perhaps it would do the trick to allow cities to declare some of their food surplus as tradeable. Perhaps trading of food would only be allowed after the invention of economics (commoditization of grain) or refrigeration. After all, using the US as an example, what percentage of modern Americans live within 25 miles of the source of most of their food?
-JMP

[TheHateMale]

Re: limits on using strat. resources

It would probably be possible to limit the production of resource-requiring units by using the method that limits production of spies/missionaries multiplied by the number of a resource you have. Of course this would only need to apply while they're being built as opposed to limiting how many can exist at one time.

A potential problem of this is having large numbers of cities with nothing useful left to build.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Rook
I think the old palace feature from the previous Civ games needs a revisit.

Oh please don't bring up the Palace! I'm glad they did away with myself, just useless eye candy that only served to interrupt my game. Now if it actually served a purpose I can see bringing it back but not like the way it was in all previous Civ games.

[Willem]

Originally posted by jmp
It always bothered me that a single resource or luxury unit is automatically enough to provide its benefit over the entire civ. If I take over all of the cities of two of my rivals, it will still take only one unit of gems, spices, or whatever to provide the benefit to all of my cities. This is even more unrealistic with some of the resources, notably oil. Wars have been fought because larger nations consume more oil. (There are other factors, but that's a start.)

I agree with you but the simplist way of doing it would be to have one resource supplies x number of cities. Then you decide which cities get the resource if there's a shortage.

Perhaps it would do the trick to allow cities to declare some of their food surplus as tradeable. Perhaps trading of food would only be allowed after the invention of economics (commoditization of grain) or refrigeration.

I like that idea. It certainly would be in line with what happens in the real world.

[djpsychonaut]

Originally posted by TheHateMale
Re: limits on using strat. resources

It would probably be possible to limit the production of resource-requiring units by using the method that limits production of spies/missionaries multiplied by the number of a resource you have. Of course this would only need to apply while they're being built as opposed to limiting how many can exist at one time.

A potential problem of this is having large numbers of cities with nothing useful left to build.

This is a good idea. Resource shortages are evident in history. The clearest example being the 1973 oil shortage in the United States. The US does produce about half of its own oil, but depends on foreign nations to provide the rest. There should be some acknowledgement of this economic principle in Civ 4.

I like the multiplier idea, and I think that as the eras progress, a given mine (or whatever other improvement) should have a higher multiplier effect to simulate the improvement of production technology from ancient times throught to the industial and modern eras.

[Rook]

Originally posted by Willem


Oh please don't bring up the Palace! I'm glad they did away with myself, just useless eye candy that only served to interrupt my game. Now if it actually served a purpose I can see bringing it back but not like the way it was in all previous Civ games.

Well did you even bother to read the rest of the post? The idea is a look/feel type thing that is supposed to give the player a feeling of what era they are playing. I know that kind of thing doesn't appeal to everybody. That's what the options menu is for. If you don't like it, turn it off.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by jmp
It always bothered me that a single resource or luxury unit is automatically enough to provide its benefit over the entire civ. If I take over all of the cities of two of my rivals, it will still take only one unit of gems, spices, or whatever to provide the benefit to all of my cities. This is even more unrealistic with some of the resources, notably oil. Wars have been fought because larger nations consume more oil. (There are other factors, but that's a start.)

I am quite happy with the current system.

To make it more "realistic" is to add a lot more work without much gain. You will first need to determine, probably randomly, the size or total reserve of a particularly luxury resource. Then you need to have some ways of determining production and ways to increase production. Then you need to figure out how many people in the population actually wants that item. Afterall, some people may want ivory instead of gems. Then you need to map production to consumption.

After this big mess what do you exactly gain?

[johnmcd]

One of the other things is, that if you make it more realistic in one regard another element of the simulation that is lacking realism presents itself – why can’t I breed my sheep and stick them on every grassland tile?

That said, I do like the principle of it.

[Adagio]

What I'd like to see in an expansion pack:

A religious victory: You state religion should be spread to 80% of all cities (not population), and you need to own the holy city for all religions

Future: 100 years into the future would be nice (and thereby delaying the space race victory)

Some way to buy missionaries for religions you don't have (only avaliabe if you have free religion)

A way of making strategic plans with AI teammates: Telling them when and where I'm going to attack, so they can be ready to defend their cities near that enemy (if their units are too far away when I attack, they can suffer huge losses)... also it would be nice if they could get ready to attack too

...and then the usual stuff like more Civs, Leaders and traits...

[djpsychonaut]

Adagio,
I'm liking the Religious Victory idea and also the idea of the Space Race starting later. I don't think the Space Race should even be able to begin until you start reaching the technologies at the end of the tech tree.

I would like some way to acquire missionaries of another religion somehow, and also the ability to continue building missionaries after the Scientific Method, even without the Science bonus.

As far as coordinating with your AI, you can already do that. When you go into the diplomacy screen you can click on "Let's talk about something else" to access this option. You can ask that leader how they feel about other leaders, but also you can coordinate an attack on an enemy's city.

[TheHateMale]

...or change their research in a permanent alliance.

[Willem]

Originally posted by djpsychonaut
would like some way to acquire missionaries of another religion somehow, and also the ability to continue building missionaries after the Scientific Method, even without the Science bonus.

All you need is to have a Monastery built before Scientific Method comes around. Although you don't get any culture or research bonuses, you can still build Missionaries with them.

[djpsychonaut]

Right, I know that, but if you go to a war with a Buddhist nation and you have no Buddhism in your other cities, you aren't able to spread the religion if the war takes place after Scientific Method. I think you should be able to.

[Solomwi]

You can switch to Organized Religion. It allows missionaries without monastaries.

Adagio: I like the idea of a religious victory condition, but requiring the ownership of all holy cities makes it, in part, yet another "semi-conquest" condition, like domination. Maybe lowering that requirement to two or three shrines/holy cities and compensating somewhere else, or allowing for victory through intense spread of a single religion would do the trick. Or maybe my concern is unfounded, and it turns out to be a good victory condition for requiring a builder/conquest combination approach.