I wouldn't want the job of making Civ V, Civ IV is too good

[frenzyfol]

Added to the espionage system: Some kind of advanced warning as to the AI's intentions..

for example.
Our investment in espionage has payed off. Our spies have uncovered Montezuma's detailed battle plans. It seems that our years of peaceful trading are of little consequence and he plans to attack in 10 turns.

[LordShiva]

Alot! There's plenty they can undo.

[Kuciwalker]

It's incredibly easy to make a Civ V better than Civ IV.

1. Rename Civ V to SMAC II.
2. Make SMAC II.
3. Profit!

See?

[LzPrst]

example of how disease would work.
For every unit above 5 in the same stack, suffer 2% attrition per turn.
For every unit over 8 in the same stack suffer 5% attrition per turn.
For every unit over 12 in the same stack, suffer 10% attrition.
Stacks of 12 would be highly unwieldly.

Then add in terrain. If stack is in jungle, double attrition. If stack is in mountains or desert, add 5% attrition.

or similar. you get the general idea. the exact numbers aren't too important, it is the idea of it, someone with math+balance skills can work out the details.

with supply trains you can reduce attrition. with medic upgrades you can reduce attrition. with technology you can reduce attrition.

there should be 2% attrition per turn for single units in jungles. those places are death traps.

[Hauptman]

The EU3 attrician is simple and effective. Not to toot the competitions horn or anything but...

It keeps army stacks from getting out of control but does not prohibit it in an emergency.

[Unimatrix11]

Yeah, i agree: attrition modeled like suggested, is better than fixed stack sizes.

[Seedle]

First off, I really like the attrition idea. However, I don't think units in cities should suffer attrition unless enemy units are besieging them, because it would be a pain to have to move every, or at least a majority, of the units you build to different squares instead of just leaving them where they are built in peace time. In fact, siege units could have a "spread disease" promotion that would allow them to increase attrition on neighboring enemy stacks, but would work better on cities and forts than in the field. And speaking of forts, I think they should decrease (though not eliminate) attrition, to make them more useful.

On the other hand, I don't like the idea of empire-wide food pools. While it is more realistic, I think it detracts from gameplay. One of the best parts of Civ, for me anyway, is determing optimum placement of my cities. Is it worth the 2 desert tiles to have that resource in my fat cross? Along with this, especially in Civ4, is determining the best improvement mix for each city. If food is pooled, specific city placement becomes less important, because you can always get more food elsewhere. The real problem though is that you'll only have 3 types of cities: farm cities, mine cities, and cottage cities (or whatever would be in Civ5.) Since you could get food from elsewhere, there would never be an incentive, especially as your empire grew, to have diverse improvements in a cities radius. Although, now that I think about it, war could be an incentive. If your trade routes are cut, your food is cut. A pure cottage city would maximize commerce in peace time, but would starve quickly in wartime. Whereas a city with cottages and a few farms could hold out longer. Still, I think cities would become even more cookie cutter than they already are with universal food.

[Lancer]

Replacement pool might be a good idea too. A trooper can be knocked down all the way to one bar and replacements just magicly appear to fill the slots of the dead and wounded. Instead a civ should develope replacements that are used when a unit is wounded. This way a civ could be 'bled white', its units like kamph groupen (sp) just a shell. Long wars could be very hard on unit force levels, as many conquerers discovered.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Seedle
First off, I really like the attrition idea. However, I don't think units in cities should suffer attrition unless enemy units are besieging them, because it would be a pain to have to move every, or at least a majority, of the units you build to different squares instead of just leaving them where they are built in peace time. In fact, siege units could have a "spread disease" promotion that would allow them to increase attrition on neighboring enemy stacks, but would work better on cities and forts than in the field. And speaking of forts, I think they should decrease (though not eliminate) attrition, to make them more useful.

Sure, there's an easy way to do this: Only damaged units cause attrition/disease. Then ready-built units are fine, only ones involved in battles. To do siege damage, you just catapult the city a bit

On the other hand, I don't like the idea of empire-wide food pools. While it is more realistic, I think it detracts from gameplay.

Agreed.

[Unimatrix11]

The spelling is ´Kampfgruppe´.

In think in general, concerning war in Civ, the devs should look over to the paradox titles (attrition and manpower pools, both are concept from there) and strategic command (e.g. supply lines), and try what could be reasonably incorparated into civ (hey its totally okay to learn from each other). They should IMO not look over to the total war series tho (no battlefield zoom).

[The Priest]

Civ IV is great, nostalga and some blips apart its come along way from Civ II when i started.

But there can always be improvements. Picking up what some others have said I would go for:

1. Something to stop war being about the SOD - disease/supply sounds good.

2. Trade roots which impact on the user. I just ignore them and the computer sorts them out. Setting up/protecting trade should be important to the player.

3. Resources were a brilliant addition, but in the mid to end game they rarely drive wars (as they should) because you only need 1 of each however big you are. Once you have conquered a bit of land, you are pretty well guarenteed to have all the strategic ones. The early game is much better - the desparate invasions/far off colonies to secure some iron or whatever. Even if we stick to one resource supplying all your needs (the simplicity is attractive) just have a real chance, increasing with the number of cities you have, of it becoming exhausted. If you are large you will always be searching out the next iron or oil.

4. Some change to the end-game so you can win according to vicotry conditions without playing out boring turns when the end is obvious.

5. A new form of colonies. We still haven't quite got this right. CIV 3 colonies got it, in as much as they were things you founded abroad to get the resources, but since they gave way to any city founded nearby, they were pointless. BTS CIV 4 gets good things with its colony expenses, turning independent etc. However you still don't get the sense of deliberately founding something (a colony) which is never intended to really be part of your civ, just a way of exploiting resources. Similarly you could have a 'mililtary base'. Look at things like Gibraltar or the Dutch colonies in the East Indies. They aren't cities in CIV terms. Wouldn't be hard but would stategically be interesting - a single plot, no culture, founded by selters/workers (not a worker action), counts as a city for healing units and defence, maybe give it 25% defence, counts as a harbour and road for trade routes. Permanently remains your culture (e.g. can safely be in an island of foregin culture - Gibraltar) but you pay maintainance for it increasing exponentially with the amount of foreign culture in the square.

6. The option at start up for 'AI fights well, but in the end i always just win'

[johnmcd]

If resource usage worked in a way a bit like corruption it could keep some of the simplicity whilst making multiple strategic resources attractive.

One city and one iron could give a 50% production boost to swordsmen. Two cities one iron could give a 40% boost to both (regardless of whether they are actually using iron or not at the time). By the time you have twenty cities and a single iron it wouldn't be doing much but enabling the production of the unit. As more resource comes into play, so the productivity could step up - until you conquer more towns.

I'm not sure how you do something that impacts the happy/ health resources, unless you implemented them along the lines of representation (+3 happy in three largest cities or whatever it is). First gold adds happiness to three largest towns plus producer, next gold does a happiness for the whole empire.

It shouldn't turn into a micro management nightmare of watching populations and working out scenarios and priorities between equally sized towns and what have you. Nor should it require the map to be so flooded with resources that they seem to lose meaning.

[snafuc4]

Originally posted by wodan11

That would be disease. Historically, disease killed more of every army than the enemy did.

Only in modern times (say, the past 150 years), has this changed.

Wodan

I'd halve that estimate. Even in WW1 disease was rife (think 'trench foot'); only when penicillin & the sulphonamides were discovered was it significantly reduced

[jdjbuffalo]

Originally posted by Heraclitus
-Let the player play on multiple maps: Think of all the cool stuff that could be done with that for mods and the like. Especially in combination with the spherical map. Imagine zooming out of the strategic view a bit and seeing the moon or taking a look at another planet. Fantasy would benefit from this as well, underground layer ect.

Along these lines, I would love to see Civ V go well beyond 2050 and "Future Tech". While I love history and the Civ Experience, I'm also a SciFi fan and would love to go out to say 4000 A.D. with all the SciFi tech. I think it would be great if we expanded out beyond Earth and were able to do things on a grander scale similar to Masters of Orion II. I'm not sure exactly how it would be done or if it would even be possible to keep it within the confines of Civ but if they could pull it off that would be great.

If they don't go that route then I like a lot of the ideas that have been proposed by everyone else as I'm sure I'll get Civ V regardless.

[Seedle]

Originally posted by johnmcd
If resource usage worked in a way a bit like corruption it could keep some of the simplicity whilst making multiple strategic resources attractive.

One city and one iron could give a 50% production boost to swordsmen. Two cities one iron could give a 40% boost to both (regardless of whether they are actually using iron or not at the time). By the time you have twenty cities and a single iron it wouldn't be doing much but enabling the production of the unit. As more resource comes into play, so the productivity could step up - until you conquer more towns.

I'm not sure how you do something that impacts the happy/ health resources, unless you implemented them along the lines of representation (+3 happy in three largest cities or whatever it is). First gold adds happiness to three largest towns plus producer, next gold does a happiness for the whole empire.

It shouldn't turn into a micro management nightmare of watching populations and working out scenarios and priorities between equally sized towns and what have you. Nor should it require the map to be so flooded with resources that they seem to lose meaning.

This sounds really good. Only needing one resource has always bugged me too. This system not only addresses that problem, but also affects ICS. Getting +50% to certain builds might allow a smaller empire to stay closer to a larger one in production, making expansion for the sake of expansion less attractive. It's almost like waste, only it doesn't feel like waste, and it can be avoided by securing more resources.