Civ V Player Wishlists

[Teemu Ruskeepää]

Teemu's 3 crucial wishes for Civ 5:
-Try to replicate the historical economico-social reality and put the player under those alternatives. Make the game based on academic economical stages starting from the hunter-gatherer-semi-cultivated-semi-domesticated-agricultural-slavery-feodalism-manufacture-industrial-post-industrial. Bind the player to the historic specific time period, society model, geographic resources and neighbour relations by replacing the simultaneous start with script AIs. Scrap the 4000bc start and begin before the invent of agriculture in the right time period for that tribe. The earliest would be the earliest known hunter-gatherers. The latest would be the hunter-gatherers of the 19th century. Bind all cultures to their historical situations, when they first appeared on history books. Nation states begin with the declaration of independence in a particular environment. Recreate that environment. All solo player civs begin with their historical time, not 4000 BC. Put the player to face the historical situation and to try to change the history. Multiplayer works so that players choose in turns the protagonist Civ and others will choose the other cultures of the time.

-Make a new society modeling table from Alpha Centauri version. It needs variables like economic model-political model-religion model. Each civ will have its unique variables based on natural resources and knowledge. Political model allows only certain economic and religious models and vice versa. Try to catch the reason for societies, rather than putting them all in the same mold.

-Only one city can build units at a time, and the unit number depends on the number of cities.

[Bkeela]

I can only identify two main areas that Civ IV is still lacking.

The first and most important, to me, is the end game, scoring, and hall of fame.

I don't think the end game has enough bells and whistles. The replay is fun, but the ranking at the end is boring. Maybe it would be better to have an arcade like high score, so getting first place was something worth striving for.

The score needs reworking also. There needs to be a score that recognises builders as being equally skilled as warmongers. I've not given it much thought, but something that takes more into consideration than territory and population. (Though such measures are sufficient for in-game ranking, the end game score should be different, and require more finesse.)

The Hall of Fame is the worst thing about Civ IV. I want more stats about my play. For example, I want to be accorded an overall score, that takes into consideration my overall results. I want to know exactly what country I played, and the leader. I want to know the date and duration of each game. I want stats like the quickest ever victory, the largest ever population, the largest ever city, the highest culture, the most wonders in one city, etc, etc.

In short, I want a special trophy room in which I can gloat over my general performance. Something maybe like an game achievements on Xbox Live. Maybe unlockable novelties.

The second area that needs work is the Apostolic Palace/United Nations. I'm sure others will feel the same, and they'll probably have better ideas than me. Though I would like something a bit richer than a pop-up with various options.

[Nugog]

Re: Civ V Player Wishlists -Please Use Discussion For Opinions -Here Only Wishlists

Originally posted by Teemu Ruskeepää
-Only one city can build units at a time, and the unit number depends on the number of cities.

What would your rationale for this be?

[Teemu Ruskeepää]

Do not act against the rule of making comments on the Discussion thread.

Teemu Ruskeepää, Finland

[Nugog]

Sorry - I am asking you to explain your third point - as I do not understand what you would wish to achieve by this.

[Blanchardb]

There are two obvious things on my wish list to make Civ V more realistic.

First, in all civs so far, all rivers are automatically spanned by bridges wherever there's a road whenever the possibility of building a bridge (any bridge) is available. My wish is that there should be three classes of rivers: one that can be spanned at minimal worker effort starting in the late antiquity, one that can be spanned only from the Renaissance era, and one that can be spanned only in the modern era (e.g. suspension bridge), at great worker effort, and only with certain materials available at first. After all, Victoria Bridge, in Montreal, crosses a river, was built in 1850, and was for a long time the longest bridge in the world. Additionally, wherever a river marks an interciv border, no bridge can be built without an open borders (or similar) agreement. Once built, however, a bridge remains operational unless it is torn down.

The second thing on my wish list has to do with barbarian behaviour. Barbarian peoples should be allowed to do the exact same things as AI civs (that is, trade, treaties, culture, etc.), the only difference being that they should be much less efficient at expansion and research, and that they settle their first cities much later. This opens the possibility that when a civ gets too large, a "province" (that is, several cities in the same region) can break away from it and assume its own independence (as happened, in real life, with the United States). They should be called "minor civs" or something similar. In the case of a breakaway province from a human player's civ, the human could be allowed to choose whether he will continue playing with the breakaway province or the more faithful part of his civ. A breakaway province would get all of its former master's technologies, all the culture points of breakaway cities, but would not be bound by any of his treaties.

[kniteowl]

I like to see a Hex Grid Civ Game instead of a Square Grid, It's kinda funny that a unit can explore and move faster on the map when it's moving diagnally then moving straight.

I dont any other ideas that would improve the game...

[AoA]

Oh, and my wish for the wish list. Make the game almost exactly like Civ2. That is truly a game that stood the Test of Time (wink, wink)

[emeseles]

Music as cultural output

As I was playing BtS I started pondering an alternate incentive for players to have open borders. What if music were created by your cultural output? Like, the actual music played in the game.

New music is released every 'n' turns on the world, but based on the top culture producing civs. If you have open borders with other civs, you'll also get their music through trade (though, it's free, just a cultural exchange of having the borders open).

This has the advantage of enticing the player to try and repair bad relations to get more music available to them that their people didn't invent.

It's true that some pieces of music in the game I like and others I dislike.. it's also entirely possible that if I received some music I like from another civ, that I might become subconsciously biased toward them.. and vice versa if they give me some music I hate.

Is this kind of subtle manipulative game mechanic a good idea for civ5?

[yianni1066]

My wishlist for Civ 5 is for the makers of the Civ games to sit down and play Call to Power by Activision and LEARN from it and adopt some of the BRILLIANT changes they made.

As far As i am concerned after playing CtP and CtP2, Civ 3 and Civ 4 were going BACKWARDS!! They are still good games but CtP's were better as games.

As Activision is no longer making these and I have no choice but to buy these new ones I am PLEADING they play CtP and Learn from it!!!!

for example, WHY?? can't i build Units and buildings seperately? Why cant i create a queue? and there are plenty more!!

What makes a good strategy game good?!?.........Choice!! Why can I not build my own roads? Maybe I want them to go round in circles!

anyway, im just ranting now but am i the only one who thoght the CtP games were BRILLIANT compared to the Sid Meier games?

[yianni1066]

oops sry cant seem to delete it

[pauli]

i want hexes, and i want my palace back.

[Freek]

O yes, the palace. I WANT IT BACK TOO!


And here is the rest of my wish list:


(1) More AI cooperation against strong nations (BIG IMPROVEMENT)
Computer players should be much more eager to (military) cooperate against a third nation when it grows too strong. (Of course also if that third nation is the human player.) Computer players are too carefull trying too survive but their decisions should reflect that surviving but not winning is just as bad as losing a war and being exterminated.

(2) Much more diplomatic options (BIG IMPROVEMENT)
For example:
* No restrictions on trading different types of favors. For example: technology for money, military assistance for converting religion, resources for map information, etc.
* More trading options. For example: food (at transportation costs), units, building improvements, adjust borders, permanent map information (also on moving units thereby turning off the fog of war), technology under the restriction that it is not traded to third parties, peace for the next 200 turns, not building cities in a specific area, stop working on a world wonder, etc. Well, just a lot more options!!
* Specific military coordination. For example: I attack city A with archer B in turn C if you put galley D on my fishing spot E for protection during F turns. (Ok, that's maybe a bit too complex, but something like that!)
* Making threats

(3) Better balance between number of cities and micromanagement (MEDIUM IMPROVEMENT)
Civilization has a lot of options to micromanage your cities. And if these options exist, I also want to use them (for example by checking each turn wether every city has still an optimal allocation of its citizens over the surrounding tiles). However, this becomes too much effort when you have more than 5-10 cities. (Therefore I always play on tiny maps). So I would like a better balance between the micromanagement possibilities and the number of cities.

(4) Better music (SMALL IMPROVEMENT)
There are only a few tracks I like (mostly Renaissance music, BrahmsHungarian1 and the game intro); I find a lot boring or even annoying. If it's too difficult to find a lot of nice tracks, just drop the restraint of era specific music. Rather a few good tracks than a lot of bad ones!

(5) Faster city screens (SMALL IMPROVEMENT)
In all recent civilizations, loading a city management screen takes up to several seconds. Surely, this could go faster.

(6) Better information when setting up a world (SMALL IMPROVEMENT)
In all recent Civilizations I have problems during game setup choosing the parameters for the land/sea proportions. Please more help information and bring back the sample world illustrating the effect of high seas or snaky continents.



And finally...
MARATHON SPEED IS PERFECT
(Please keep that one.)

[Jeroen Schweitzer]

Definitely the palace!

[Guynemer]

I think there are some things Civ5 could improve on, though Civ4 is, by far, the best game of its kind to date.

One of the few things Civ4 failed on compared to previous iterations (SMAC specifically) is the AP/UN. It is just too dry. Yes, it is meaningless gameplay wise, but give us leader pictures. More importantly, give us the option to buy votes with tech, cash, embargos, war, etc. Give us the option to call a vote ourselves, rather than wait for one. Give us far, far more things to vote on. This must be improved.

Other things that made SMAC fun, such as distinct faction attributes, just wouldn't fly with Civ from a marketing standpoint. But, a more SMAC SE-type system, with several different categories like support, probe, efficiency, etc., influenced by leader traits and government choices, would be fun.

My last SMAC-based recommendation would be better wonder movies. Against, something totally inconsequental to gameplay, but it is the flavor of the game that makes Civ4 such a huge improvement over Civ3. Civ4 wonder movies are bland (though still better than Civ3); SMAC wonder movies still give me nightmares.

Finally, I'm not a CTP fan at all, but the public works dynamic was a nice idea. I think it could be refined a bit, but not having to micromanage all those workers would be great.