Civ4 Suggestions

[Spiffor]

Actually, I too was a diehard opponent of the "everything has to be 3d" thingy until very recently, when I understood the biggest advantage of 3d : graphic flexibility. I have put some thought in putting Civ4 into 3d, and I really didn't see the drawbacks of such a thing :

- putting the graphics in 3d doesn't force any drastic gameplay changes. There is no need to change the way cities are selected, or units are moved : for example, there is no need to set an altitude to your planes. The game still mostly reasons in 2d.
- however, it allows a proper display for such gameplay changes (like terrain defined both by elevation and climate)
- at a normal zoom level, a 3d Civ map barely looks "round", but rather looks about as flat as a 2d map would be. There is no more need for fast and furious camera moves in a 3d environment than for fast and furious scrolling speed in a 2d environment.
- I think an aerial view of the map, like the one we have now, is the best view we can have in a TBS. 3d doesn't hinder us to have such a view, even though it offers the possibility to explore new ones.
- The 3d translation would be botched if it forced the player to change the camera angle to select a city / unit, or to get some info.

In short, a good 3d translation would make possible many new possibilities. A bad one would force them. It is a strong feeling that Civ3would have no interface change, should it be 3d. ADG, do you think 3d would have forced changes to Civ3 interface, had Civ3 been 3d ?

[The Mad Monk]

-bring back wonder movies
-bring back the council
-bring back the multimap feature ToT had
-bring back rush building
-more as I think of them

[Adagio]

Originally posted by Spiffor
In short, a good 3d translation would make possible many new possibilities. A bad one would force them. It is a strong feeling that Civ3would have no interface change, should it be 3d. ADG, do you think 3d would have forced changes to Civ3 interface, had Civ3 been 3d ?

What I believe is: It takes more resources to make a game 3D, and since I prefer gameplay over graphics, I'd say they should spend those resources on making the game playable/without bugs

* ADG takes a look at Civ3

[pedrojedi]

And still, for me, 3d environment, for all arguments Spiffor "Legoman" said, would still be a dispensable plus... None of those reasons really make it more than "eye-candy" (I liked this expression ), at least for me.

[Spiffor]

- More buildings
"More" doesn't always mean "better", but Civ3 suffers from the lack of buildings : once your empire has solid production capabilities, it can build all buildings in all cities before the next tech is discovered. It forces even hardcore builders to build massive armies for lack of more peaceful options.
From mid-game on, there is no drawback of a builder strategy, because it doesn't hinder the player to build troops. At this time, the choice between military and economy (the big rift of Civ3) is no more, because the player can afford both.
It hurts the complexity of the game, and this is bad.

- More (optional) techs
- More techs whose very discovery create a direct effect. Like Economics doubles the effect of wealth, we could have techs whose very discovery trigger a reduction of corruption, create culture, decrease the effect of cathedrals, increases the moves of boats and so on...

- completely change commerce (I'm not talking about trade between Civs).
Make it directly dependant from the population of the city, its trade connections, and its internal infrastructure (marketplace, banks, "trading posts", "supermarkets" and whatnot), not from the roaded tile around the city.
It is absurd that commerce, and the creation of wealth and research that go along, comes from the amount of peasants working on roaded tiles. It forces all tiles of the empire to be roaded. This is ugly, especially for newbies, and it is tedious for those who manage their workers.
In terms of fun, the separation of commerce and roads would make the game more simple and accessible without dumbing it down : commerce would still exist, there would still be ways to improve it, but tedious micromanagement and ugliness would be over. Besides, highly populated cities will now be attractive.

- Make it possible to have allied units on the same tile as your units. It would make allied warfare much more interesting, as you would be able to defend a failing ally's cities without them being taken by the enemy, and allied troops wouldn't block you the way.
- By the same token, please please please include unit trading. It would bring a tantamount of diplomatic / macchiavellian fun (many more details in the link).

[Spiffor]

BTW, a comprehensive list of ideas has been assembled by DarkCloud late 2001. They were for Civ3 once it was out, but many ideas are still valid. You can see it here

[Elok]

I agree that the game needs to be much more modifiable than it is.
Screw 3d; I want a game that suffers a minimum of slowdown, doesn't hog memory, and puts most of its effort into gameplay and the balance thereof.
Fundamentalism should be rebalanced, but it needs to come back. I wanna be an Ayatollah.
I'd also like a fascist government that's great at suppressing happiness among its own and has the option of exterminating foreigners in your cities at the price of making the rest of the world hate you. Probably won't be integrated because it sounds barbaric, but as long as we're dreaming, I'd use it.
That "your whole city decides it wants to turn to the neighboring country" thing must go. What a load of crap!
The Arabs were the dominant civilization of the Western world for most of a milennium. They need representation a lot more than, say, the Iroqouis. I guess the Arabs would be scientific expansionists led by Saladin or some such.
It'd be nice if there was something to reflect growing standards of medicine and hygeine. The knowledge that you need to wash your hands before delivering an infant caused a population explosion, but none of the Civs to date really include anything like it.
That's all I can think of right now.

[Manya]

events

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by badams52
(1) make fortresses have ZOCs like civ II.
(4) ability to mediate peace between rival civs.

I like these.

Also alternative tech trees, a better trade model, more diplomatic options. And one more: make the UN useful !!!

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Manya
events

Please no events. Anyway we have one, global warming.
I hate events that you have no control over them, they just happen.

[epics]

Have any one mentioned this before?:
add new specialist citizen which will provide shields, lets call it carpanter/enineer

[Stefu]

Say, does any of the old hands still have The List around? Or the Essential List? If you know why I've capitalized the words, you know what I'm talking about. Many (most?) of the (good) suggestions in The List weren't put to use, and I'm convinced they could still be utilized for Civ4.

[Tiberius]

Essential civ3 list

There were 2 categories, new ideas and fixes. Obviously today, with the new features, rules, etc of civ3, the list is outdated, but an interesting reading nevertheless.

The "new idea" that received the fewest votes (namely Tourism) was mine but I'm still proud of it

Unfortunately I wasn't able to find the older, original, complete list. I had it on my hdd, it was a document with over 100 pages ... or was it 400? I don't really remember exactly, it was a long time ago and back then I was only a newbie on 'Poly

[Adagio]

Originally posted by Tiberius
The "new idea" that received the fewest votes (namely Tourism) was mine but I'm still proud of it

Sad... I liked that idea... I actually sugested it myself, before I knew about this list...

[mrmitchell]

Another happiness improvement in the Ind/Mod ages. (Wait...is there one? Sorry if there is )

Electronics makes a lot of people happy, all the late Modern makes a lot of people happy... also, Hospitals could double with a happiness benefit, because your loved ones not dieing away should be good.