Some Things We'd Like to See :)

[Lunacy]

Someone mentioned disasters - I think these would be fun. They could be included like Barbarians as an option whose frequency you can control. You can either set it so that civs are likely to experience many disasters or none. Or they could be something that occurs with more frequency the higher the level. It would be another factor to include in planning a strategy. For instance you might have a really good location full of cows and luxuries near a volcano. Do you take the chance of settling nearby and possibly loosing a city down the line or not. If you're planning a marine invasion do you take the chance of sending ALL your troops in one shot and possibly loosing them to a hurricane or not. The only real disaster we have in the city is the nuclear meltdown one.

Another thing I would like, particularly for the multiplayer experience, is for allies to be able to share things. I like to play with a friend of mine as allies against the other civs. I'd like to be able to sell or give my ally galleys, planes, artillery. Right now the only thing we can give or sell to one another other than luxuries/resources are workers. I also think that if you have an ROP with a friendly CIV and especially if you have a MPP your units should be able to heal in their towns or even occupy these to help protect them. When your unit enters another CIV's town you have an ROP or MPP with you could simply get a prompt asking if you're attacking or simply reinforcing/healing. This would be comparable to real life since allies often asist one another in ways like this.

In the multiplayer game again I'd like to see a popup when a civ starts working on a GW and also when your citizens want to expand your palace. I haven't been seeing either of those. I'd also like to see an option so that the game automatically saves itself after "x" number of turns.

Lunacy

[TheEmerged]

Originally posted by Willem


That already exists, look in the editor under Natural Resources. You control the frequency with the Appearance Ratio.

I'm not talking about the editor, I'm talking about the point where I'm starting a new, non-scenario single-player game.

[Azeem]

The corruption model could also have happiness affect corruption and waste. Happier people = less corruption and waste while unhappy people = more corruption and waste. Technology and era could also reduce corruption.

[Cyclotron]

Infogrames still has a very sucessful game (Neverwinter) on its hands, and is about to release an XP for that. I highly doubt that they will go out of business in this year.

[WarpStorm]

Originally posted by TheEmerged
I'm not talking about the editor, I'm talking about the point where I'm starting a new, non-scenario single-player game.

Why not use the editor? That's what it's there for. It's easy to do and if you find settings you like, you can use them over and over. Unless I'm playing MP or doing a test, I always play scenarios.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Azeem
The corruption model could also have happiness affect corruption and waste. Happier people = less corruption and waste while unhappy people = more corruption and waste. Technology and era could also reduce corruption.

So you're implying that the CEO's and managers of Enron, WorldCom etc. are unhappy? Maybe they are now that they're busted, but I doubt they were when they pulled those scams on their stockholders. In fact, they were probably laughing all the way to the bank.

[Wittlich]

A valid point Willem and I concur.

[Azeem]

I also mentioned somewhere (I think it was on the corruption thread) that when your cities get bigger, your marketplaces and stockbrokers should cause some corruption (piracy and insider trading ).

[Ghengis-Sean]

hmmm what would i like to see in civ4??

Okay, you asked. I would like to see,

1) Regions. Currently the game reaches a point where your civ gets so big it becomes unmanagable. You spend most of your time figuring out what to do with your cities, that eventually the game becomes somewhat tedious. This is true of all big conquest and development games and civ is no exception. Fine, let's fix that. Why not, say when a civ develops Republic or Feudalism, allow it to clump cities together into regions. The new region is essentially an "Army" of cities, it has all of the production of the member cities, but maybe less corruption. There might be downsides, like revolt, or the possibility of having the entire region "flip".

2) Bring back Civil Wars. this was one of my favorite features of the original civ series, civil wars. They were great! And history is full of countries degenerating into civil wars. Now I understand that "Anarchy" is supposed to simulate this to certain extent, but it would still be nice to see some sort of mechanism for big civs to collapse ala the Soviet Union, or Alexander the Great's empire.

3) Reappearance of dead civs. History is also full of once dead civs coming back. Take Greece, Persia or China for example. all of them got overun by their enemies only to emerge again. Maybe this could be tied into civil war? For example let's say the Romans conquer the Celts and the Greeks, then later on down the road Carthage takes Rome, maybe cities that still have Celt or Greek citizens would have a chance for revolt, and if succesful then their civ comes back. How about if the city goes into discontent, or if the conquering civ goes into anarchy?

4) While I'm on it, how about the appearance of new civs? Currently when you kill a civ off, it will pop up (allowing for enough space of course) again. How about a new civ. I kill the English off, the Celts appear. i kill the Chinese off, the Russians pop up. There are enough civs to do this with a normal or large game. only when you run out of civs should dead civs be thrown back in.

5) Navigable Rivers. The world is full of rivers that ships can sail up, how come in civ they can't? I don't think it would be that tough to arrange, or figure out. Also how about different sizes of rivers? The Rhine and the Amazon are both big rivers, but the Amazon is much, much bigger, shouldn't this be represented in terms of game play. In the ten years since civ1 they haven't tackeled this issue at all.

6) Natural harbors. Many cities in the world were built because they had a good, natural harbor. Boston, Naples, New York city are good examples. Why not allow for natural harbors in the game? It would pretty simple to arrange, just randomly distribute the little harbor icon along the coast. Any city built next to the harbor icon would automatically have a harbor.

7) Irrigation of hills. Come on, is this so hard to implement? And swamps!

8) More government types. Once again, since inception civ has had the same govs (excluding Theocracy). Are we to believe that the Democracy of fifth century b.c. Greece is the same as the Swiss Democracy today? How about varieties of Government, mixtures? Federal Republics, Democratic Republics, Socialism, Constitutional Monarchy, Fascism, Feudalism? How about a MAgna Carta wondr, or a Bill of Rights? there are alot of possiblities out there, lets see some of them.

9) Tying unit strength to science levels. Everyone compains about this, how my tank got killed by a pikeman, or a trireme sank my ironclad. How about giving units a bonus if the controlling civ possesses certain sciences, maybe a +1 to defense for bronze working, a +1 to attack for iron working, a +1 to movement for military tradition, a +.5 for being in the middle ages etc, etc, etc. This way your group of warriors actually gets tougher as time progresses, so your Iron age Archers are tougher than someone elses stone age archers.

10. Dividing Sciences and Technologies. some sciences should not have to be traded for, but simply aquired from contact with a civ that has it. Writing for example. the greeks never traded the phonecians bronze working to get alphabet. Instead the Greeks saw the phonecian alphabet and then developed one of their own. Other sciences, like advanced flight, should have to be traded for or stolen, because it's not something that can simply be copied.

Okay, so these are some of the things I'd like to see. The point of allo f these is to introduce more variety to the game, I firmly believe that the more variety there is in a game, the more playable it is because each game is more likely to be very different. Of course it could just be me.

okay, now tear it all down!

[Willem]

Originally posted by Ghengis-Sean


7) Irrigation of hills. Come on, is this so hard to implement? And swamps!

You can do that now, just go into the editor and change it.

[TacticalGrace]

Originally posted by Ghengis-Sean
1) Regions.

Excellent idea! This could solve a lot of the current problems!

2) Bring back Civil Wars.

and done reasonably well in CTP. culture flipping is the current implementation in civ3 and look how many people that pissed off. I suspect civil war would too.

3) Reappearance of dead civs.
4) While I'm on it, how about the appearance of new civs?

these sound the same to me. and they are already implemented aren't they?

5) Navigable Rivers.

6) Natural harbors.

I wouldn't get too excited about these changes

7) Irrigation of hills.

you could in civ2 and I don't miss it. Plus ytou can do it using the editor

8) More government types.

I'd like to see a 2-dimensional gov system.

9) Tying unit strength to science levels.

perhaps just adopt a SMAC style system

[Panag]

hi ,

barbarians should get the hitpoints back and should be able to take over towns and "run" it in some way , .....

have a nice day

[ZargonX]

Originally posted by panag
hi ,

barbarians should get the hitpoints back and should be able to take over towns and "run" it in some way , .....

have a nice day

That reminds me of the days gone by in Civ II when I would sail along and find a city that the poor AI had let fall to the barbs and never taken back. I always wondered what kind of society that barbarians had made for themselves, and what would happen if I were to let it flourish more over time... not that I ever did... but what if...

[TacticalGrace]

The barbarian people are in fact, contrary to popular opinion, a caring and sensitive folk. They're not so much blood-thirsty warmongers as just misunderstood.

They would rather lead a quite life in their little wooden huts but due to a cruel twist of fate their traditional dress doesn't lead itself to camouflage (it was once bright red but these days they wear pure white). This leaves them open to "dispersion" by the mainstream civilizations who are only interested in the 25 gold pieces of ransom money that must be paid for all barbarians leaders as is decreed by the Barbarian Code.

[Willem]

Originally posted by TacticalGrace
The barbarian people are in fact, contrary to popular opinion, a caring and sensitive folk. They're not so much blood-thirsty warmongers as just misunderstood.

Yeah right, has anyone ever opened a dialogue with them, in order to understand their side of the story? Anyone?