Future Era Units/Very Early Techs

[John Hugo]

There are so many intelligent people working together in this forum. I would love to hear ideas from the community about future techs and units. I would love to see ideas from the community about possible future techs and even very early techs. Why must the game have so few future techs, when there is such a wealth of science fiction available to us for inspiration? Early techs like fire which focus on the dawn of man would interest me, as well as studying agriculture instead of having it as a default would be nice.
I also wish the spaceship we build would be going to Mars instead of some distant star. That is the next big frontier, which we are likely to establish in the next 20-30 years. On that point Mission to Mars could even be a Wonder. Techs to head to the stars could be things like Hyperspace, and Cryogenics.
I would love to hear some ideas from our very creative community. :)

[tempshemps]

I agree... the game needs more future techs, and I like the idea of drawing inspiration from science fiction. I'd also point out there are a lot of what you could call "modern wonders" that already exist and could be included, like the Burj Khalifa.

I think your Mars spaceship idea is terrific, but I think the ultimate science win should still be based on the idea of getting to planets orbiting another star system. Some sort of "Mission to Mars" wonder you could build that would yield various benefits would be very interesting though, and I'd love to see that included as an "in between" tech - before the trip to Alpha Centauri. It'd be even more interesting if you could actually colonize the planet in the game.

Anyway, here's my wishlist of things (many from the modern/future eras) to add to Civilization V:
My Wonder Wishlist:
*Hubble Space Telescope
*The Moon Landings (Have Apollo Program be the Moon landing wonder... have something else like Project Longshot or Project Daedelus for the start of the space-race to Alpha Centuari... and you could maybe re-use the old wonder-video for the Apollo Program that you had in Civilization II?)
*Mission to Mars
*Strategic Defense Initiative
*International Space Station (ISS)
*Nuclear Fusion Energy Project (one of them is called ITER)
*The Large Hadron Collider
*CERN
*NASA
*The Hoover Dam
*Petra
*Mount Rushmore
*Smithsonian Institution
*The Internet
*Project Orion
*Copernicus' Observatory
*Las Vegas Strip
*Cedar Point and or Six Flags
*Burj Khalifa
*Space Elevator
*Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid
*Sky City 1000
*Asteroid Mining Program (Provides additional strategic and luxury resources, such as iron, gold, silver, uranium, etc; also reduces unhappiness from #population)
*Space Tourism Industry

Tile Improvements I'd like to see added:
*Maglevs
*Plant Forest (plants new trees on a non-desert, non-water tile, which take a certain number of turns to grow into a "forest," which you can then put lumber mills on again)
*Airports
*Irrigation Project (Re-routes water from nearby lakes or rivers to irrigate cropland, increasing food)

New Units:
*Sea Colony Ship (settles cities floating on top of or under bodies of water)
*Space-planes (ultra-high altitude bomber capable of doing immense damage to cities while evading most anti-aircraft weapons)
*Scramjets
*Thermonuclear weapons (a more powerful form of nuclear weapons - the more modern kind we have today which is primarily based on nuclear fusion as opposed to nuclear fission. These are immensely powerful and should require the scientific resources of a 'superpower' to obtain.)
*UAVs
*More robotic military units. (With more emphasis on realism than we saw with the Giant Death Robot. Various military powers are developing/have developed them, so they could be a modern era unit, with more advanced models coming in the future era.)

New Buildings:
*Automobile Company
*Computer Company
*Television Broadcast Station (Happiness bonus)
*Video Games Company (Happiness bonus, science bonus, and production penalty because everyone is playing Civilization V instead of doing their Calculus homework so they can become engineers, and requires a computer company)
*Robotics Company (Production bonus, science bonus, requires Robotics technology and Computers technology)
*Arcology (Reduces unhappiness from #citizens in the city)
*Amusement Park (Provides a sizable happiness bonus. Requires 1 Iron to build the roller coasters.)
*Resort Hotel (City must be built near a mountain or a coastline, provides a gold bonus and a happiness bonus)
*IMAX (happiness bonus)
*Cellular Phone Company (Requires satellites technology, provides a gold bonus and a science bonus or a production bonus. Possibly requires rare earth metals to construct.)
*Fusion Energy Plant (Production bonus)

New Resources:
*Rare Earth Metals (For those of you who remember your Chemistry... they are an important component of a wide variety of modern electronics. 1 Rare Earth Metal could be a requirement to construct the computer company in a city).

I'd also like if we could have more policies to choose from. I'm not sure what they'd be at this point, but I think additional options would be nice. How about a "future era" social policy tree? I'd like to suggest "Technocracy"!

[John Hugo]

Dude, you are clearly the brains of the operation. Brilliant ideas! Thanks for the reply. JH

[SamBC]

If the future were to be expanded, in terms of units, I'd like to see a full slate of contemporaries for the GDR. Power armoured infantry (as a sci-fi staple but also looking more plausible), a la Starship Troopers (the book, of course), newer generations of sci-fi-ish aircraft, a hovering battle platform to upgrade the gunship to (that would have to plausibly be the anti-GDR unit, I suppose).

[PachaMinnie]

I think that the Future Era would make for some nice Scenarios. Not much you can add in-game however, mostly because the game is over before you reach future tech unless you are going for a really long game. Perhaps a Mars Colonization Scenario Robot Rebellion Scenario, Alien Invaders Scenario, Battle for Mars Scenario, Battle for the Garden of Eden Scenario.

Mars Colonization Scenario: Playable Civs: European Union, Asian Commonwealth, United American Emirates, South American Space Program.
Setting: The Moon, NO ITS MARS SILLY!
Description: Your people yearn for a new Homeland in the vast emptiness of Space, who will you be? Will you be the already Overpopulated Nation of the Asian Commonwealth, The bickering EU, The Economicly struggling UAE, or the growing SASP. Are you ready to cover the Red Planet with Green? Are you ready to crush your enemies? Are you ready to become the first leader of Mars?! Are you ready to dominate the great space?
Asian Commonwealth: Leader: Mao Tse-Tung the 9th
UA: Crowded Spaces: Each founded city begins with Extra population and a Mech Infantry Unit
UU: People's Astronauts: Replaces Astro Fighters, Cheaper and moves faster than regular Astro Fighters.
European Union: Leader: Adolf The Great
UA: Fascism's Finest: Units are Produced faster and no negatives from Unhappiness
UU: Space Nazis: Replaces Lazer Tanks, Stronger than regular tanks, but cause extra unhappiness in your own borders.
United American Emirates: Leader: George Washington Mackenzie King Villa the 2nd
UA: UAE Dream: All Bordering cities grow faster, and get bonus happiness.
UU: Riders of the Night: Replaces HyperCavalry, Bonus fighting in friendly territory and in enemy territory.
SASP: Leader: Dom Pedro 8
UA: National Growth: With each turn you get a small bonus in everything, VERY powerful late game.
UI: Terraforming Forest: Allows Workers to build Forests to replace the barren wastes of Mars, Very Valuable.

They should have a new tech called Cloning and you Get Dinosaurs from it.

[Martinoguy]

You could always extend the victory requirements to include future era.

These victory conditions would involve Mars or Alpha Centuri in addition to the normal world ( switch between planets).

Your victory conditions for military include conquering the native species (X number of alien city states, X number of alien civs) in addition to other players like normal
Your victory conditions for science include building a great terraforming project on the planet itself
Your victory conditions for culture involve filling out another social policy (one of three included in the expansion: Transhumanism (robots, military augmentation), Xenoecology (Science), Purism (nonrobotic, not compatible with transhumanism, diplomacy/culture based)
Your victory conditions in Diplomacy include a Federal Space Alliance vote which requires a majority of native martian votes in addition to Earth votes.

You would be the first to Mars to begin doing what you want by building the space ship (science), Utopia project ( culture attracts visitors from another planet which invite you to their planet), Diplomacy ( take me to your leader), or Military (Aliens invade the planet to stop your tyranny when 2 civs remain)

[Vlynor]

The last idea about diplomacy sounds like an idea formed when consuming illegal substances.

The rest isn't bad though.

[Akinaba]

Actually I also thought about improoving modern era -- future era technologies.

I pushed out from the point that the whole "space race" in the game is represented poorly.

While thinking of it I found out that there are a lot technologies we can potentially include in game, but if we are talking in real game the it must appear very unballanced because of that huge ammount of technologies.

One of approaches could be to set several directions in science equals to the victory types that exist and to try to stick on them.
Lets say: Science, Cultural, Military and Diplomatic.

Science Victory:
Particulary that was my departure point. Thinking of how Science Victory condidtions could be improoved I came to some kind of "Cultural policy" tree that unlocks only when Space race is avaliable where you can spend your science points on various space race events (like first manned orbit flight, or unmanned mission to Mars, etc.) very likewise you spend your culture points on purichasing certain polices in culture tree. The whole tree must lead to the one final goal: The manned expedition to the Alpha Centaur (neighbour star system).

Because to tell the honest truth "The Appolo Programme" was not all that preceedes Alpha Centaur mission. There were a bunch of events like: First Artifictial Sattelite flight, First Manned Sattelite flight, First Spacewalk, First Docking in space, Umanned Sattelite Missions to Moon, Unmanned Sattelite Missions to Venus, Unmanned Sattelite Missions to Mars, First Habbitated Space Station, Rover Mission to Moon(!), Manned Mission to Moon, Rover Mission to Mars [and here stops present day acheevements].

Future day acheevements would be: First Long Living mission to Moon (or the First Moonbase, called also first extraterrestrial Human Habittating Attempt), and only then First Living Mission to Mars.

Only after that, or maybe colonising Venus we can make an attempt to reach neighbour star. Oh and also: First sattelite mission to Alpha Centaur, First over mission to Alpha Centaur, and onlu then Manned Flight to Alpha Centaur.

That's it. Now I see we just have no free technologies to cover the whole branch of this actual Space history.

Therefore we have several choices:
1. Make this tree to be lik Cultural policy tree with unlocking certain "branches" of space studying like: Sattelite Technologies, Unmanned missions to other planets, Habbitating missions on low earth orbit. Adding there such things that "Military sattelite network" (that will increase spy cappabilities or remmoves fog of war in certain places of map), "Broadcast sattelite network" that will boost culture a lot. An so on. But this option seems to me more complicated right now, though very interesting.

2. Make this things to be a "World Wonders" so ou can produce them as usual, with certain benefits.

3. Remoove a majority of cheevemts and stick to three "Manned missions": First Man in Space (Yury Gagarin flight), First Manned Moon Mision (Appolo Project), and Airst Manned Mars mission (what's going to be I don't know what name).

And Above all this I strongly recomend to build a Launc Site for any of said missions to be launched. So to launch say manned mission to mars you should produce Carrier-Rocket first, than all required payload, like say Habitated Module and Life Supply Module. Then launch them separately on orbit. Each with it's own Carrier-Rocket. Then wait several turns for assembly of a spaceship on orbit. And only than you will be able to "push the button" to set this mission off.

Also, if we'll stick to this concept of launching a space missions we can easily have a situation when say one country produce payload (since it requires certain technologies and amount of science), while other country have a Carrier-Rocket (since it requires a lot of production points) and one country may ask, or pay or whatever the other to provide launch of it's payload to orbit. Sounds like more politics to me.

I strongly stand against any kind of "extraterrestrial colonization" including in the main game. Since I believe that Civilization always been a game about Eart. Do not exclude Mars or Moon colonisation as standalone games or scenartious though.

International Space Station is actually an International so it can not be build by a single country (though it IS a modern World Wonder). So such international world wonders are tricky and I don't know how to deal with it. Take a look at Internet say. At the first time it was a national project and than worldwide obviously.

Cultural Victory:
Here we should defiitely add some technologies or buildings that will allow us to keep boosting culture to those who willing. I don't know what technologies to add here, exept wht we allready have: Radio, and Television. National Sattelite Broadcasting Network can be also a good wonder and do a good boost, though.

Military Victory: Oh well, it's all going up to ballance. Believe if it hadn't happened to this times we are talking about it's not gonna happen at all. However we are not playing only for military victory, but for fun, yeah? So we can for example switch off all victory types exept Military and play this game.

I also reviewed some branches of military units and came to thaht conclusion:

Military Improvements: Now we have almost none cappabilities to counter Nuclear Ballistic missles, becuse they have been fired from the city itself. As it appears in our reality we can actually never fire a missle from the city. So we can have Missle Silo improvement to add more tactiaclity to war. Along with this we can have also Stationaty Antiair Defens Missle improvement or SAM to counter possible ballistic, or tactical missle income. Or we can build Early Warning Radar improvement with SAM to make Mobile Sam's able to counter ballistic and tactical missles (this is not really clear for me now).

Ground Forces: We have pretty good cover of ground forces in present game. However almost all modern warfare depends on rockets in various executions. Now if we will go off from ballistic and tactical missles deploying in the cities it quiet obvious we can have a Road-Mobile Ballistic Missle Launcher platform, and Road-Mobile Tactical Missle Launcher.

Now I know that it's not really meaningfull for those, who lives in USA, but for those who's broders does not consit from generally oceans ;) it's quiet significant.

Air Forces: I have reviewed tihs branch generally too and I think what we miss here the 2-nd aircraft generation, or just first jet aircrafts. Personnaly I'd be very glad to see first jet MiG aircrafts in the game (why MiG's? Becuse it was most produced aircraft in the world of that time). So the Figters and Bombers Branch in my view was such (names of units are changable):

Biplane --> Fighter --> Interceptor [or Jet Fighter] (Mig-21 or Electric Lightnig like)--> Monuver fighter [or Modern Fighter] --> Stealth Fighter

Biplane Bomber --> Bomber (B-24 or Avro Lancaster like) --> Long-range Bomber [or Strategical Bomber] (B-52 -- vietnam era aerial bomber-like) --> Supersonic Bomber (Nuclear Missle Capable) (B-1B Lancer, or Tu-160 Blackjack-like) --> Stealth Bomber

Beside all this I'd like to see Nuclear Bombs and Ballistic Missles as a payload for certain Planes, Ships, Miobile platforms or Facilites, rather tha standalone units (but it complicates everything actually and maybe unnesecary).

Naval Forces: I was a lot pissed of that after Battleship you have no heavy strike ships. However modern world does. It's simply Guided Missle Destroyers that America actually does not posess (for no nessecerity), but there are countries that have them.
So I vote for Missle Destroyer as a new unit for modern era, and it suprisingly Nuclear cappable, with ability to strike even at the sea.

Then Missle Cruisers most be capable not only to intercept airplanes but any kind of tactical and ballistical missles, though "Ticonderoga" class missle cruisers (wich is actually depicts an ingame model of missle cruiser) are (or will be) cappable to perform this tasks. Also Missle Cruisers must be Tactical Missle capable and when their usual animation of strike must not look like they pop from a nose turret, but unleash their rockets from deck silos.

Beside all this would be intersting to have Large Landing Ship that can board your units and descent them onto shore without loosing a moovement points.

Oh and
Political Victory: I don't know actually what to do here becuse since we build UN we are attempting to win it, and other science victory conditions are a ittle overpowered.

Talking about new technologies in industrial/modern era I strongly recomend you to put a Precision Mechanics as technology that provided capability of constructing the Gyroscopes -- device that is so vital to perform a rocket guidance that if there were no such device invented there supposingly would be no rocketry at all.

Talking about Future Techs I can see only two or three certain techs: Cold Fission, Superconductors and (maybe) Cloning. No more to see.

*Nuclear Fusion Energy Project (one of them is called ITER)
Actually ITER isn't nuclear, but Termonuclear project and it's based on TOroidal CHAmber on MAgnetic Coils, or "TOCHAMAC" ("TOKAMAK") of Russian design, but who cares? :)

Exuse me for multiply missprints and mistakes all through the reading btw.

So, to do a shortlist of improvements:
Possible future technologies:
-- Cold fission
-- Supercondustors
-- Cloning

World wonders:
Space:
-- "Vostok" programme (or better: Manned Orbital Flight);
-- "Apollo" programme (or better: Manned Mission to Moon);
-- Manned Mission to Mars;
-- Space Telescope (or "Hubble" telescope);
-- Space Station (might be either a National wonder);
-- Sattelite Broadcasting Network;
-- Satelite Navigating Network;
-- Sattelite Intelligence Network;
Ground:
-- LHC
-- ITER

Improvemets:
-- Launch Site;
-- Missle Silo;
-- Early Awarning Radar; (or maybe Stationary AA site);

Units:
-- Carrier-Rocket (which is a civil unit);
-- Space Payload (civil unit also);
Ground:
-- AA interceptor missle (it can be used to ballance limited amount of Nuclear Missles that it has to counter and can be deployed on Stationary AA site);
-- Road-mobile ICBM platform;
-- Road-mobile tactical missle platform;
Air:
-- Jet Fighter (or Interceptor) (Vietnam-era fighter);
-- Long-Range Bomber (B-52 Stratofortres);
-- Supersonic Bomber (Cold war strategic bomber);
Navy:
-- Missle Destroyer;
-- Large Landing Ship;

[PachaMinnie]

http://gizmodo.com/5715192/the-secret-soviet-laser-tank

Proof! I have proof! Laser Tanks are real! Да живее Унијата! I vote Laser tanks need to be in the game. I am no longer crazy!

(\/) [;,,,;] (\/) Woop Woop Woop

[Akinaba]

http://gizmodo.com/5715192/the-secret-soviet-laser-tank

Proof! I have proof! Laser Tanks are real! Да живее Унијата! I vote Laser tanks need to be in the game. I am no longer crazy!

(\/) [;,,,;] (\/) Woop Woop Woop
Man, this thing was designed to bliding out the precision bombing guidance systems. Not gonna make a tiny damage to an armoured vehicles or planes. Sorry. ;)

Also

Да живее Унијата!
Don't have a clue what you are talking about right here. :)

[PachaMinnie]

Man, this thing was designed to bliding out the precision bombing guidance systems. Not gonna make a tiny damage to an armoured vehicles or planes. Sorry. ;)

Also

Don't have a clue what you are talking about right here. :)

Shh... Shhh... You are slowly killing my dreams, just shh. It will be alright. Shhh. Laser tanks are real, and they are a threat. Just like Cat Tanks. http://mousebreath.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/cat-tank.jpg
Plus it might've been used to turn enemies to ashes, we don't know what it really did. Russians like to keep secrets, shh shh.

OR NAZIS! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B28kahcrjM&feature=relmfu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_VIII_Maus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1000_Ratte
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1500_Monster

This brings me unto the Topic of "Wonder Weapons"

[Shamajotsi]

I'd bet "Да живее Унијата!" means "Long live the (Soviet/European?) Union" in, hm... Macedonian?

[PachaMinnie]

I'd bet "Да живее Унијата!" means "Long live the (European) Union" in, hm... Macedonian?

Not European Union friend. But yes. Correct.

[John Hugo]

I like the idea of mobile missile silos. And i reiterate: some kind of anti-nuke system. The idea, the a bunker will protect a city from a nuclear weapon seems absurd.

Cloning would also be a cool tech. It could allow you to build droid armies.