What would you put in an expansion?

[shirgall]

I would have the "inquisitor" unit remove a religion from a city, consuming the unit. Have there be a penalty for having non-state religions in a city under organized religion and theocracy. (minus one hammer?)

[Blake]

I would like a "Fair Borders" treaty, prehaps somewhere around Liberalism.

Fair Borders would do this: it would be signed between two civs, and "shared" territory would be allocated fairly rather than by culture, essentially so that the cultural borders don't unfairly "invade" cities fat crosses.
If two cities were 4 tiles apart, the border would be exactly between them.
If they are greater than 4 tiles apart, then outside the fat crosses it is decided by culture.
For 2 tiles apart, the border runs down the middle, 1 tile away from each city.
For 3 tiles apart, each city gets atleast 1 tile depth of space, the contested middle tiles are decided by culture.

With 3 or more civs contesting the tile it would be a little bit more complex, basically it is calculated by the cultural owner "cedeing" the tile to whichever partner is most deserving, either the one with the closest city or the one with the most culture in the tile.

Fair borders would give some diplomatic benefits, culturally weak civs would especially appreciate them. Culturally strong civs would need to be bribed to compensate for the loss of tiles (especially fat-cross ones, and ESPECIALLY resources) but it would still give a "years of peace" style bonus, since the weaker no longer has imperative to fight for cultural survival.
Combined with open borders, the "close borders spark tensions" penalty would be completely eliminated.

[Willem]

Originally posted by shirgall
I would have the "inquisitor" unit remove a religion from a city, consuming the unit. Have there be a penalty for having non-state religions in a city under organized religion and theocracy. (minus one hammer?)

More like -1 happiness. That would certainly be more historically correct. But the inquisitor should also have an effect on happiness, though temporary. Kind of like pop rushing. And also the unhappiness from the second religion doesn't clear up until the one from the Inquisitor does.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Adagio
I have written my idea on the religious victory a few times, don't remember what threads it was though

Same here. My idea is that you have to found 4 religions, and have your state religion established in 60% of the cities in the world.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Blake
I would like a "Fair Borders" treaty, prehaps somewhere around Liberalism.

That defeats the whole purpose of culture in the game, and make it so that there's never any culture flips. So there'b never be an incentive to build Theatres etc. in your frontier cities.

And I think it would be really awkward to implement. What if, along the same border, one civ had cultural dominance between two cities and the other one had it between two other cities. I think the mechanics of working out compensations etc. would be rather clumsy and would just add more processing requirements to a game that is already top heavy in that department.

[CrashDuce]

I always love the Unique Units, and I always thought you could expand on these...

I would like to see every civ have an early Unique Unit and a Modern Unique Unit...

Example Americans

Early Minute Men to replace Musketman...Cheaper Hammers since they were a mostly volunteer Unit...
the for Modern...Navy Seal (although being a Marine from the early 90's I hate seeing my unit being replaced)

This could definitely be a very cool aspect of the game when each Civ has a couple. Now this could get difficult with more of the older Civs...Not sure what the Aztec Modern unit would be… You might not have to make it a modern unit….One early or One Industrial unit. Just more unique units…it gives the civ more flavor


Or course I would like to have more Civs…I think each Civ should have at least a male ruler and female ruler. Why does England Always have to be a chick?

[johnmcd]

There is a lot of demand in a lot of threads for a way to negotiate borders.

I'd also like a way to annex land, like the great frozen wastes that nobody colonises.

[Willem]

Originally posted by johnmcd
There is a lot of demand in a lot of threads for a way to negotiate borders.

Yes, but how would you implement it? The computer would have to assign a gold value to each and every square inside a cultural boundary. That would probably add a great deal to the processing requirements of the game, which is already quite high.

And chances are that no one, human or AI, would really have the cash in order to make a deal.

[Blake]

Originally posted by Willem


That defeats the whole purpose of culture in the game, and make it so that there's never any culture flips. So there'b never be an incentive to build Theatres etc. in your frontier cities.

And I think it would be really awkward to implement. What if, along the same border, one civ had cultural dominance between two cities and the other one had it between two other cities. I think the mechanics of working out compensations etc. would be rather clumsy and would just add more processing requirements to a game that is already top heavy in that department.

Easier than you think.

Iterate over every cultural-tile. Take the cultural owner - it is entirely up to the owner to "donate" the tile.
Make a list of all civs with Fair Borders with the owner, and the owner themself.
Pick the nearest city belonging to a player in that list, if it's inside the fat cross, then cede the tile to that city.
Negotiate draws by culture.

It's an elegant enough algorithm, and only needs to be run when the cultural ranking of the tile changes.

Now for the cost in diplomacy:
Run the algorithm over the shared borders and calculate the new border-topology, define a gold value for every tile which changes hands, say 10 gold for the loss of a workable tile, 15 for a resource. Loss of non-workable tiles (peaks and those outside fat crosses) is 0 or 1 gold.
Losing a chance of flipping a city maybe 25-50g.
(all gold is per turn)

The tradable component of resources simply don't change hands - the "Cultural" owner keeps control of them and they may not be re-terraformed.
Alternatively a "hypothetical resource topology" could be generated when the deal is proposed. So basically the resources which would flip "come with" the fair borders agreement, partners can then trade the resources back (or equivilant resources) to balance the deal.

Mostly in practise this would be used as a charitable agreement by players with vassals who they don't desire to anger or opress with cultural pressure. It would also be used by devious players to avoid starving future conquests.

As an optional feature, it doesn't reduce the value of culture. If you like culturally bullying another civ you can continue to do so.

edit: As for the expense, it would usually be done as a charitable gesture by the "Culturally Wealthy" player, making being unable to afford it a moot point. However it would also be possible to buy fair borders to relieve pressure by trading resources. It wouldn't be particulary expensive if the culturally wealthy player doesn't actually lose many or any workable tiles - losing flipping-chances would be more expensive, so they'd be reluctant to "give up while winning".
Cost would also be modified such that unfriendly leaders are very relucant to cede tiles, they'd always be happy to accept if it's a win-win for them though.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Blake
Easier than you think.

It doesn't sound easy at all. I think it would get rather tedious having to squabble over each and every tile. You'd be spending so much time in the Diplomacy Screen that you wouldn't get much chance to play the game.

Now for the cost in diplomacy:
Run the algorithm over the shared borders and calculate the new border-topology, define a gold value for every tile which changes hands, say 10 gold for the loss of a workable tile, 15 for a resource. Loss of non-workable tiles (peaks and those outside fat crosses) is 0 or 1 gold.

And that was my point. The computer would have to take care of that for the player in order to provide some sort of reference, and a gold value would appear in the rollover window. This would have to be done for every single tile within a cultural border. And that would just add more processing requirements to the game. And I don't want more, it's already high enough. I can't even play a Standard map with 8 civs. Adding yet more demands might force me down to even 6.

[Blake]

You're either not a computer scientist or you don't really understand the algorithm I propose. Also, you wouldn't negotiate over every single tile - it's a wholesale all or nothing, take it or leave it deal.

Would I be wasting my time explaining the big-O performance of the algorithm?

[LordShiva]

Definitely O(n).

[Willem]

Originally posted by Blake
Would I be wasting my time explaining the big-O performance of the algorithm?

If it has anything to do with computer programming yes you would.

My expertise doesn't go much beyond HTML coding and basic scripts. XML I can handle, Python generally leaves me scratching my head in bewilderment.

[gdgrimm]

It's probably way too complex for an expansion, but I'd like some sort of civ slavery effect -- similar to what SMAC had.

You can beat a civ into submission, after which it's treated as a permanent alliance, but you get to decide where any team projects/wonders are worked on.

[OssomTossom]

I would like to see one-tile canals. They don't have to be longer, and I can imagine that longer canals might make the game a bit unbalancing (and unrealistic - or is there a canal that runs from the Baltic to the Caspian Sea?). But maybe you'd like to be able to be able to sail from the Black Sea to the Mediterranian, or a make a Suez Canal, but without the city maintainance costs?

And about Viking UU - longboat makes sense, but if it were possible (I know it ain't, though), they should be able to sail on rivers, rather than across the ocean. The Swedish used to sail on the big Russian rivers, and I think it was the Norwegians who would sail up to Paris and attacking it. Of course, what with this being a ship, and units being on a ship, normal units couldn't attack them. Inland cities would thus be quite defenceless against them.

Oh, and if they're added - don't call them 'Vikings'. That was only a group within the culture. It would be a bit like having a Civ called 'Merry Men' or 'Cowboys'. Or possibly 'Bandits/Pirates'.