If you could bring one thing from an earlier Civ version to CIV...

[albucc]

Well. Civ4 with BTS is soooo better than all these predecessors...

About the landmark feature: the ability to put notes on a spot (ALT-S) do the trick, don't?

About the evolving leaderheads: yes, it would be good. But it's cosmetic.

About the castle: ... well, yes, it would be nice...

But what I think that is an idea that appeared and was underdeveloped in SMAC, that would be great in CIV V is **prototyping**: you could design your units. That was great. It shouldn't be used simply as it was, though, because it would spoil the game flavor. It should be worked on. For instance, the unique units of the game could be linked to great people. Great engineers or scientists could bring new units, like the kwacha, for instance. Great generals could bring the samurais. Great prophets could bring crusaders.
Or unit promotions could bring unique units prototypes.
That would be cool...

[Supr49er]

Originally posted by wardhali
pollution civ 3 style, with no automation to clean it up

Originally posted by Jvstin


Gah, No!

I was very happy to see that Civ 4 removed that little feature. Playing "Whack a pollution" in the end game, every game, no matter how green my Civ was, was one of the reasons why Civ III was a chore more than a pleasure.

You got that right. Running around cleaning up orange blobs made me quit more games than not.

[awckie]

The ability to play without having to touch my mouse so much.

[albucc]

Originally posted by awckie
The ability to play without having to touch my mouse so much.

That is good! Can't agree with you more!

[Theben]

I almost always shortkey everything. What do you need to use the mouse for "so much"?

[wodan11]

They probably don't know how to hotkey stuff.

Wodan

[Unimatrix11]

What i did like about Call to Power were two things:

a) The way improving your lands worked: Have a slider on hammers to accumulate some empire wide and spent those on tile-improvements, rather than having to move your workers around. They could still be in the game, as an alternative way for tile-improving (esp. roads outside your borders), but if it was possible, i´d probably prefer the CTP-method in my games. EDIT: Of course this would need a descent ammount of balancing, since workers are a one time investment, that yield benefits for free from the day they are finished, while the hammers would be a constant drag, as long as you are improving your tiles.

b) a maximum number of units per tile. adds realisim and for my taste fun, too. it simply wouldnt be possible to have those massive stacks of doom wander around. I agree, in pre-modern times, that was the way wars were fought: 2 armies moving around lurking for the best opportunity to get at each other. But since WWI at the latest, fronts did develope - multiple armies (=stacks). That never really happens in Civ4 - and i dont like that. EDIT: An alternative would be to implement a supply-system like in strategic command II. That would force you to develope fronts, no matter how many units you could stack in one place. If that can be done on a civ-scale, will probably depend on what system-requirements can be reasonably expected and demanded when and if Civilization V will be done, i guess. If it can be done, it should be - with or without the stack limit.

From SMAC: The unit costumizing was fun, yes. But i wonder if its a good idea, going so much into detail of unit development, when playing a game that spans 6000 years. Imagine all the components (=weapons) that would have to be implemented into the tech-tree seperately and the many times, you´d spent a couple of miutes to costumize your new units using them (and upgrading your old ones)... it could easily develope into a drag in MP, when people, due to hard competition, could be forced to implement their newest gadget, no matter how minor its importance, into new designs and upgrade their units... So maybe rather not...

[albucc]

Originally posted by Theben
I almost always shortkey everything. What do you need to use the mouse for "so much"?

For instance: at the dialogs. Yes/no answers needing to be answered by mouse instead of "Y"/"N".
At the menus, no shortkeys; no tab based focus changing, all this needing to go by mouse.

[albucc]

Originally posted by Unimatrix11
From SMAC: The unit costumizing was fun, yes. But i wonder if its a good idea, going so much into detail of unit development, when playing a game that spans 6000 years. Imagine all the components (=weapons) that would have to be implemented into the tech-tree seperately and the many times, you´d spent a couple of miutes to costumize your new units using them (and upgrading your old ones)... it could easily develope into a drag in MP, when people, due to hard competition, could be forced to implement their newest gadget, no matter how minor its importance, into new designs and upgrade their units... So maybe rather not...

Can't agree more. That's why I think that shouldn't be imported "as is" (as I said). But I think that as the ability of customizing your army technology some special way (forging your civilization nature and unique units during the game flow, based on your decisions).

[Unimatrix11]

So, like having a costumized unit would be like a golden age, kinda ? that sounds feasable and fun indeed...

[Addled Platypus]

the old Civ2 worker unit art

[Arrian]

Hmm.

I vehemently disagree with the idea of bringing back corruption. CIV's system of maintenance is much better. If people feel there must be more checks against expansion, I think it could be done without going back to corruption (ugh).

I liked artillery more in CivIII, but I also think it was unbalancing. So I can't really argue for bringing that back (odd as it may be to order cataputs to charge axemen or whathaveyou).

The scenario editor that CivII ultimately had. Yeah, that's what I'd want. CIV may be wonderfully moddable, but I'm not smart enough to deal with it. I need a tool that does the heavy lifting for me.

-Arrian

[Seedle]

For scenario editor. Rules.txt was easy. The XML files are a bit harder to figure out, and have more formatting, and there are more of them. It is much more intimidating for a newbie (like me) to change Civ4 than it was in Civ2.

For advisors. And I don't want CG advisors, I want bad actors. And I want there to be extraneous video on the disk that you never see (or at least, I never saw) in the game.
AND ELVIS HAD BETTER BE IN THE FREAKING BUILDING!
and on that note, for entertainer specialists. Although this would be best represented by just notching the culture from artists down a little and letting them give happy. Maybe have doctor specialists too?

For wonder movies. On the one hand, I liked them, and I still pull out my Civ2 disk to listen to the music on the hoover dam movie once in awhile. On the other hand, they do get boring and disrupt the flow of the game.

Corruption and pollution. Pollution especially. I agree something needs to be done about ICS, but corruption is the least fun answer available, IMO But pollution is just pointless.

Global Warming. Nothing sucks worse than planning your improvements and which city gets which tiles to maximize productivity and balance food, and then having a tile turn to desert. I think I hate global warming more than corruption and pollution.

For trading production within your empire. Having a new city in the mid game take 100 turns (I play marathon) to reach a point where it can actually build something is annoying. Being able to ship production from an established city would be good. Or, perhaps even better, the ability to ship population via extra settlers.

[Ravenloff]

There should definitely be an option for a city to donate production and/or food to another city, be it yours or one of your allies (camels/semi-trucks).

I don't miss the entirety of zone-of-control, but I WOULD like to see forts that have units in them FORCE zone-of-control on enemy or neutral units. I would also like to see forts able to be built on top of an improved tile.

[Krill]

Originally posted by Arrian
Hmm.

I vehemently disagree with the idea of bringing back corruption. CIV's system of maintenance is much better. If people feel there must be more checks against expansion, I think it could be done without going back to corruption (ugh).

I liked artillery more in CivIII, but I also think it was unbalancing. So I can't really argue for bringing that back (odd as it may be to order cataputs to charge axemen or whathaveyou).

The scenario editor that CivII ultimately had. Yeah, that's what I'd want. CIV may be wonderfully moddable, but I'm not smart enough to deal with it. I need a tool that does the heavy lifting for me.

-Arrian

it wasn't the corruption that was the problem it was the amount of MM required because no production or gold rolled over. Allow that and the entire problem of C3esque corruption goes away.