Civ IV: The List

[Admiral PJ]

I think religion should be like culture, in fact in abstract religion could be seen as part of civ3's culture simulation.
Religion can also influence and allow taking over of people like culture does.
Perhaps you need enough religious points (or culture) before you can install a State Religion. Religions could be banned, like roman catholicisism was in early protestant england(15-17th century at least).

Well Civ3 is an excellent game, yin just talks out of his rear most of the time, in fact i thought he was beginning to like civ3.

If you haven't got civ3, then what are you waiting for?
It could be the best game of the year

[DarkCloud]

Oh well, PJ, I cant get it because my computer won't run it
I'll get to your ideas later
Here is a rundown of the ideas I have recently added: Plus a continuation of the list because I ran out of space: (I think I'll start a new thread.)

Kevin Ar18's excellent ColdWar idea added.

In addition, these ideas were added:

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For the post-modern era- Engineers can build a "suspension bridge" across 1 to 2 blocks of ocean
-DarkCloud

You should be able to build a seabase in the water (city in water).
Before you can build a seabase you must discover some specific knowledge.
As a differns from normal cities submarines should be able
to attack seabases. The same knowledge that allows you to build seabases will
allow you to build a new unit called (for example) mini-sub. The buildings in a
seabase should be different from the usual
cities but do the same thing. Instead of Coastal fortress you got torpedodefence
for example. Only some units should be able to defend a seabase and some able to attack.
The only units that should be able to find a seabase should be subs and a new unit like
harpuneman. Ships would just sail over the base. (Anyon)

subs should be able to atack citys on land, but there attack would be like 2 or 3 if the
atacked a city. is is ww2 subs had a deck gun. also they could be like bomders with that
they can chose to attack (JayMan)

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-Ran out of space
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VI. Multiplayer

- Included with the game
DarkCloud

- Simultaneous Turns
DarkCloud

- Hotseat Multiplayer
Ribannah

VII. Interface

Pressing "R" instead of CTRL+R should build a Railroad on top of a road.
-DarkCloud

all screens especially the diplomacy polished to accomodate 16 civs at once
-cort

civilopedia link from within production decision points (as civ2)
-cort

Allow links to the Civilopedia by right clicking in the selection box in town for improvements/units.
-Grunthex

Make ctrl+s => save the game as the last file saved (like in other programs like MS word) and ctrl+shift+s => save as
-ADG

When SINGLE clicking on a city I want to view the city screen, not activate a random unit
City screen--Under preferences you can uncheck the preference that the units defending a city are shown on top of the city. Then you won't activate them when you click on the city. (but you can't see what units enemy civs have defending, either!)
Double clicking should activate the top stacked unit, hopefully the most powerful unit; Single clicking should activate the city.
Credit for first paragraph-ADG...Possible Fix- Boris Godunov, Third Line- DarkCloud
A more aesthetic icon for the .Exe file for Civ
-ADG

VIII. General

Buttons on cuty screen that will automatically reallocate workers to maximize a type of production. For example, click button 1 to maximize science, button 2 to maximize food, etc. This was a useful feature in CTP1/2
-chill123

abilty to speed up AI movement in later game. Preferences choices aren't enough.
-chill123

Great People (Einstein, Picasso, John Lennon, etc) Who can add bonuses to your civilization's culture without being involved in wars.
They will be produced when a civ's "culture" rating is high for a number of years.
monkspider/DarkCloud

Post-Modern Era: Roughly about 50-100 years in the future: so that the game can fill up to 2100 AD.
But not too many 'strange' units... There are many new weapons on the drawingboards- EMP bombs, super-stealth fighters, Sub-space fighters, Mach-8 planes, etc.
-Wrong_shui/DarkCloud

For the post-modern era- Engineers can build a "suspension bridge" across 1 to 2 blocks of ocean
-DarkCloud

You should be able to build a seabase in the water (city in water).
Before you can build a seabase you must discover some specific knowledge.
As a differns from normal cities submarines should be able
to attack seabases. The same knowledge that allows you to build seabases will
allow you to build a new unit called (for example) mini-sub. The buildings in a
seabase should be different from the usual
cities but do the same thing. Instead of Coastal fortress you got torpedodefence
for example. Only some units should be able to defend a seabase and some able to attack.
The only units that should be able to find a seabase should be subs and a new unit like
harpuneman. Ships would just sail over the base.
Anyon

Flexible city radii.

I'm no fan of the 21 square cross that every city gets in civ, civ2, and civ3. You just end up with a dreary grid of evenly spaced cities all three or four squares apart. Nothing like the real world.

So, i'd suggest a system which allows city radii to 'meld'. That is, when you build city close to another one, instead of getting several squares of overlap, the radii expand in other directions so both cities get a decent amount of squares.
-Sandman

I'd like the Transform ability back.
-Sinapus

1.Bring back random placement of Civs! Civs *always* starting next to their culture buddies really ruins the surprise element & makes things too predictable. Culture Civ Placement should be an option at most.
-Pyrodrew

Please give the zoom in and out more levels.
BarnDoor

City 2-square grid
Andrew1999

"Dont zoom to units with orders" command from SMAC, if not familliar with this order it means that a unit with orders (say Automated Worker) just does his work 'off screen' and the view doesn't switch to him, this would save heaps of time later in the game when I have 50 automated workers...
-Blake

More animations for the wonders, cities, etc.
-tishco

Barbarian villages
Randomly placed resources
Luxuries
-EnochF

instead of just having a city switch sides suddenly, perhaps a few population points could exchange first over a couple turns so that you know you have a cultural problem instead of being surprised by it.
-YahMon

Windows mode
-KaiserIsak

Intro a la Civ I
-Eli

I'd like some way to guage the cultural attitude of a city. Are they about to jump ship? Are they happy? How long do I have to say, build a temple to boost the local culture? How many military units will I need to keep them from defecting? For that matter, how about giving the units a chance to evacuate or put the rebellion down, instead of just vanishing?
-Culture

We need more ways to deal with corruption.
-Monoriu

Immigration (emmigration) if you have high culture (happiness) people from a nearby civ could immigrate to your civ's closet cities and vise versa. This could lead up to an entire city switching civ loyalty.
-civmonger

I would love to have a program added to the game that would allow us to make our own flags to represent our country. Maybe in the game have a small flag on a pole waving over each of our cities. To me it puts more imagination into the game. Or better yet, not even have the program just have all countries flags today to choose from and maybe a few fictional flags. If this was implemented into the game it would be very easy for us to have mods or downloads of other flags if the ones included were not what we wanted.
-fascistdictator

Courthouses that really reduce corruption.
-jimmytrick

2. Social Engineering

-I know this has been talked to death, but I really do think it is a good idea. A social enginnering thing (alaa smac). Not futuristic, but just something that lets us customize our civ. It think the Commuism, Republic, Democracy are too out of date. Example: what kind of economy do you want your civ too have? Is it a peaceful civ, or warlike? And have the choices impact how other civs look at you. Have bonus's and punishments, ranging; for the choices you make. You want to have a depoist government?, but with huge military power?
-Jamison

IX. Editors

*Events for the Editor
Ribannah

*Corrected Earth Maps
Ribannah

the editor needs the zoom function.
BarnDoor

Edit the pollution rates
DarkCloud

X. The UN/Diplomacy

Declare atrocities, sanctions, nuclear arms reductions, pollution reductions
-David Murray

Ask another Civ to end a war against a third civ.
-Kyle

Ability to pressure allies/others into breaking treaties/stopping war
-Raleigh

If the UN is built and other nations have agreed to vote in favour of one of your competitors you have the option to say "F**k the UN!" and go on with your bussiness.
This decision would result in all other nations being at war with you for a period of 40 years.
-Mannamagnus

Amassing troops next to A.I. border should be considered hostile and they should prompt you to demilitarize the area or declare war if they are outnumbered more than 5:1.
-YahMon

Is a "Dont watch allies/peace/enemies moves" (except combat) too much to ask for? (wasn't for SMAC)
-Blake

Need to have more info on opposing civs on the foreign advisor screen (i.e. are they more or less technologically advanced?, what gov't type?, income per turn?, yada yada yada)
-YahMon

[John Paul Jones]

3D landscape ala SMAC or even better - Railroad tycoon's elevated landscape w/transparent oceans. A 'Spinnable' Spherical view of the globe.

More scripted sequences & random events.

[Bleyn]

Originally posted by Sandman
I've said this before and I'll say it again.

Flexible city radii.

I'm no fan of the 21 square cross that every city gets in civ, civ2, and civ3. You just end up with a dreary grid of evenly spaced cities all three or four squares apart. Nothing like the real world.

So, i'd suggest a system which allows city radii to 'meld'. That is, when you build city close to another one, instead of getting several squares of overlap, the radii expand in other directions so both cities get a decent amount of squares.

Think about it. You could build several cities on a small island and their radii would spread out over the sea. Or you could get several cities on a river bank to take advantage of the free aquaduct, and not be penalised by overlapping squares limiting city growth.

I definitely like this sort of idea. At the very least, there should be some way to share food resources, especially in the modern era after acquiring a refrigeration type tech. By that point there should be no reason to have two cities near each other, linked via road with one overflowing with food and the other starving.

Well, I suppose it could happen in an anarchy or maybe a dictatorship with lots of corruption but not in a republic or democracy.

[Bleyn]

Combat

I'd like to see a change in the combat system itself. IIRC, the basic combat equation for Civ3 isn't really that much different from Civ. And other than the (to me) minor changes in terms of hitpoints/firepower, its not much different from Civ2 either.

Its all still variants on the same equations:
AWP = A/(A+D)
DWP = 1 - AWP

Where AWP and DWP are attacker and defender chances of winning a round respectively.

What I don't like is that if you don't read the explaination on how combat works, I don't think you'll realize exactly what those numbers mean. Ie. To me, they just aren't intuitive. That the attack number is how strong they are when attacking seems right, but that the defensive number is how strongly they can strick back when attacked seems right at first, but when you look at how large the difference in some of the numbers between the attack and defense strength of some of the units are... It doesn't quite make sense to me.

Rather, I would like a system where attack strength represents a units ability to inflict damage on the enemy and defense strength represents the ability of the unit to absorb or avoid punishment without significant loss. Combine it with equations like the following:
AHP = Attackers Attack /( Attackers Attack + Defenders Defense)
DHP = Defenders Attack / (Defenders Attack + Attackers Defense)

Where the attackers chance of hitting and defenders chance of hitting are seperate, allowing for combat rounds where neither side hits or both do. I would even go so far as to suggest that this allow for situations where the combat either ends in a draw if there is no victor after a certain number of rounds(to avoid a combat never ending) or a pyrrhic victory where both units are killed, representing a situation where both sides sustained so much damage that they were shattered and no longer useable as a combat formation.

I don't see that this would be any harder to program or game balance than previous systems, and to me it seems like a more intuitive system then the current one.

[jack_frost]

the idea between high attack low defense, and high defense low attack is unit specialization.. This unit defends well. This unit attacks well. Having 'ability to inflict damage' and 'ability to avoid damage' means less strategic depth.





My comments:
Learning AI is unrealistic. AI sucks. So what do we do? ahh... make multiplayer more realistic.. but how? games last 30 hours?

ahh, scenerios and game types that are based around 2-3 hour sessions. Special kinds of games with very specific victory conditions - maybe "discover new world" would start you at the middle ages, and require some kind of mini-space ship to colonize america instead of AC. That kind of thing. I mean come on, in this day and age a strat game without multiplayer, no matter how deep, no matter how interesting... just gets boring since AI can't compete, and just doesn't play like humans.

religion: I'd love to see religion. But actually having religion have some kind of effect would inevitably piss people off. You can't model real world religions, and say that they have any kind of effect in a video game. Culture sort of 'abstracts' religion. Its a shame, I think its a ****ing awsome idea.

Migration: This could be very cool. Sort of like culturally taking over a city, only it happens constantly. People move around, they look for more oppertunities. Its what culture tries to model sort of. Only instead of just taking over a city, you should drain its population. There should of course be counters for this. Maybe in the form of immegration policy. People get unhappy if they are not allowed to leave when they want to. Eventually riot, and leave anyway...or something. Could be very cool. People should even move around in your own cities. If there isn't enough food in one, people would go to another.

I'm sure theres more, but I really don't like how culture works. I think its a great idea, but I think a migration model is much better then sudden changes of allegance. I mean come on, this just doesn't happen, and really, when you get down to it - doesn't add much to the game. It shouldn't be a big event once every 1000 years, but a constant ever changing process.

[Raleigh]

Darkcloud, the game is definitely worth buying.

Although there a few Civ2 things I miss, this game is head and shoulders above it, and still better or diff from CTP series in many ways. The animations are fun to watch especially during victorious combat, and the diplomacy/trade/resource system rocks the house. The variety of the Civs are fun too. The politics of dealing with so many rival civs is staggering, although slow.

[Roman]

The ability to make scenarios might be a good start and multiplayer comes in close second.

[Trifna]

I just wonder if MarK shouldn't make some forum or post only for NEW ideas. A list. This post + Yin's post seem the perfect posts to us and upgrade the List, should it be for Civ III patch and XP pack, or for Civ IV. The List must be revised first I guess.

Saying this, since it seems that with time this post will fade out.