New Features, you want

[Benne90]

I thought I'd start a thread where we could collect all the new features we want to see in the new civ,
I for one would really want some kind of feature to fix the problem with some civs just growing out of proportion so that no civ on earth can challenge them. Warring in civilization IV is too much of the only way to become big. It would be interesting if techs would leak out eventually so that other civs are not left behind in the stone ages when they have a border to a civ in the space age. This would give other civs a chance even if the got off with a bad start. It sucks to be left behind in the dust and then never having a chance to catch up which happens way to often in earth games. Even if Europe is very small we still were way ahead in tech, why? And sure resources and really good land is good but that isn't really the reason why Europe did so well. I would probably say that the main reason was because of the small patch of land being so divided, a larger empire with little competition and trade would eventually stagnate, due to corruption and so forth, while small states should actually tech faster due to constantly being in competition with the other ones and not being able to afford corruption.

So my suggestion is really to, make large civs maybe have an easier time producing more units, because obviously more manpower would come from more land, but at the same time make them tech as slowly as everyone else or slower, since a large civ would have an easier time suffering from corruption.

Additionally there is a lever which brings down the tech speed of countries in war often but there is no bonus for countries which are not in war often. There should be a bonus which just grows and grows for peaceful nations. Look at how inovative little Sweden is.

[SlickSlicer]

I don't like the latter idea, because I think that would be too much of a penalty for declaring war. War has enough drawbacks as it is.

[Floating Pants]

Well actually for a long time, China, the largest empire of its time (pre Mongolian era), was far more advanced than any Europeon countries. It all started after the Fall of Rome - the largest empire on Earth. Rome was far more advanced than any other civilizations, besides than the fact that they took out a lot of the others.

And before that, Egypt was the most advanced. During that period and time I guess the only civilizations in existance were Egypt and China, though. Not sure which was larger.

After the Visigoths destroyed the city of Rome, that led to the dark ages, where many barbaric tribes inhabited Europe. During this period, the largest (I'm pretty sure it was) empire, China, advanced further than Europe. Having a stabalized form of education, and inventing paper, the compass and gunpowder.

But once Mongolia reigned over half of China, things changed. I don't know much about how advanced civilization was at this point.

After the fall of Mongolia, Europe became more civilized, and did advance as a whole. I'm pretty sure this was the cause of tourism and interlapping cultures.


So yes, I do see your point. With free market and being open to foreigners, places do advance as a whole. This would not take place with prejudice against foreigners being present in the government though. But now, with Internet all of the technology is begining to even out on a global scale.

[Jacsó Benjámin]

I don't like the latter idea, because I think that would be too much of a penalty for declaring war. War has enough drawbacks as it is.

And it's not too historically accurate either, often, warring nations tend to be the most technologically advanced - mostly because they spend more money on scientific pursuits to be ahead of their opponent's during wartime. I mean, Sweden isn't exactly at the pinnacle of science and technology today.

By the way, this was also a major factor in why European nations were, in some respects (and still are, in some respects) more advanced than others on the planet.

Also, larger civs also tended to more technologically advanced than small ones in the past - and in some ways still are today. It should be as rewarding as it is in the game to be large, as it's a challenge to to expand at the maximum rate, while still balancing your economy and everything else as well.

[0zymandibles]

The ability to warn friendly or neutral civs alike, that if they make my doomed enemy their vassal, I will be forced to blast them back into the stone ages. I seem to remember the AI thinking it would be inconsequential to take on a vassal, as I was wiping them off the map. Incorrect. :mad:

[SlickSlicer]

It isn't very historically accurate, yes. But beyond that, it has inherent balancing issues. If there were such big penalties for declaring war, the game would become a little bit too much of a turtle fest I think. You can only punish offensiveness in these games so much.

[Politus]

Bring back the cash/culture/research sliders. :(

[theis81]

I do agree that it was a huge problem in civ IV that the big civs always ended up having the science lead as well. A way to solve this would be to introduce:

a) more spillover from science already discovered. This should offcourse depend on open borders, trade between nations, time in history etc. (you could have a lead and close borders as a valid strategy, opens up for interesting communism playstyle).

b) diminishing returns on sci production, meaning that if you double sci output learning a new sci wont be halved. This makes sence as well cosidering twice as many scientists trying to solve the same problem rarely halves the time it takes to solve it, since many of the scientists will spend time coming up with the same ideas.

a) and b) combined with the new happiness mechanism that restrain total pop and not the pop of each city, would probably make it a lot easier to catch up after a bad start. The new happiness mechanism might do it all by itself though, but tweaking sci would bring a lot more to the game imo.

[Jacsó Benjámin]

I do agree that it was a huge problem in civ IV that the big civs always ended up having the science lead as well. A way to solve this would be to introduce:

a) more spillover from science already discovered. This should offcourse depend on open borders, trade between nations, time in history etc. (you could have a lead and close borders as a valid strategy, opens up for interesting communism playstyle).

b) diminishing returns on sci production, meaning that if you double sci output learning a new sci wont be halved. This makes sence as well cosidering twice as many scientists trying to solve the same problem rarely halves the time it takes to solve it, since many of the scientists will spend time coming up with the same ideas.

a) and b) combined with the new happiness mechanism that restrain total pop and not the pop of each city, would probably make it a lot easier to catch up after a bad start. The new happiness mechanism might do it all by itself though, but tweaking sci would bring a lot more to the game imo.

but why in the world would you want to penalize big civs? it's a good thing in the game to be big, just very hard to properly achieve, and that makes complete sense...

[KojusMaximus]

I agree penalizing big civs is not a good idea. If you have been left behind..well its probaly your foult.

But I agree that big civs have another kind of problems.I think, due to simplicity of the game, I would suggest that once one of the civilizations enter a new era, ALL techs from teh previous era becomesignificantly cheaper. Those 2 eras behind - almost for free.
Now, placing techs in particular era's willbe quite real. Examples: Once we discover WWW era, all inventions before that time should eb REALLY cheap.

In antient times: onc we discover TRADE, all previous techs shoul be cheaper...


Now my 2 cents regarding new features:
what i have always missed in Civs (my favorite game) is the "orders mechanism". VERY unrealistic. We place orders and units execute them immidietly. For example - we order scout to move, and he moves. Then we know what is tehre so we move our horseman elswhere. And so on.

In Master of Orion, DOminions, Close COmbat and many many startegic games, orders are sent, but are executed at the end of teh turn, all together, so you have no idea wheter your opponent deicided to attack you or not. You dont know wheter you should stay and fortify or maybe move forward. If you meet at the same place iwth your enemy - well we do have a fight in the field... You will have to predict your opponents moves etc.

Also it is the only way multiplayer is playable I think...

[theis81]

but why in the world would you want to penalize big civs? it's a good thing in the game to be big, just very hard to properly achieve, and that makes complete sense...

For gameplay reasons. I would say the first 100 turns decides the game. So my problem with civ IV is spending too much time finishing a game that is already won and just as often realising a game is lost and it is impossible to catch up with some other civ. Making it tougher being on top would actually make it a more interesting through the entire game.

Looking at history it actually makes sence. It is only since 1900 that US was "world leader" and it seems China will be taking over soon. So mechanisms that can promote a new "world leader" are all good. Tweaking sci and happiness is a way to do it.

[Jacsó Benjámin]

For gameplay reasons. I would say the first 100 turns decides the game. So my problem with civ IV is spending too much time finishing a game that is already won and just as often realising a game is lost and it is impossible to catch up with some other civ. Making it tougher being on top would actually make it a more interesting through the entire game.

Looking at history it actually makes sence. It is only since 1900 that US was "world leader" and it seems China will be taking over soon. So mechanisms that can promote a new "world leader" are all good. Tweaking sci and happiness is a way to do it.

The first hundred turns are important, yeah, but they don't decide a game - when you play on a difficulty which matches your skill level - the first 100 turns or so are crucial, if you don't want to fall out of the race, but there should still be several contenders left by the end-game, unless your going for domination or conquest, but even then, although the score doesn't reflect it, sometimes a surprise culture or diplomacy winner pops up.

Also, China isn't gonna take over the US as the major world power, for several reasons - but this isn't a political debate forum. Also, the world leader can often change in a game (played on the proper difficulty level) without having to implement penalties and bonuses.

Besides, Civ is not a history sim - it doesn't have to work the way real life works. It's just a game with a historical theme. And as many of the suggested ideas would have stupid or horrible game play consequences, I don't think the should be implemented. Unless in a mod like rhye's, which strives for historical accuracy.

[Benne90]

I am not talking about singleplayer obviously, it is multiplayer, in the large civearth maps where the problems arise. When one player finds himself either surrounded by a bunch of AI or noobs, and decides to own all of europe in a couple of turns, then the other players who can't build towns as quickly as the other player conquers them find themselves at a disadvantage. And try as they may tech they will inevitably fall behind.

I just want to make gameplay more interesting for civs that are small. What point is there to continue if you really can't do anything at all to change what is happening to your civ? And I agree that I might be being a bit harsh but there must be some kind of mechanism to make playing the smaller civ still worth it. Maybe by teaming up with other smaller civs an increase in tech would be made possible or something like that. Or just being peaceful would increase tech.

Since wouldn't it be strange if an allied Europe divided into small states would research slower than the whole of europe united in one country? The technology always leaks eventually, if your country is just next to the other one you are bound to discover the wheel as well if they also did it. I mean otherwise countries such as the US or China would be far more advanced than Schwiez, but that is not the case.


Now my 2 cents regarding new features:
what i have always missed in Civs (my favorite game) is the "orders mechanism". VERY unrealistic. We place orders and units execute them immidietly. For example - we order scout to move, and he moves. Then we know what is tehre so we move our horseman elswhere. And so on.

There is clearly problems with the orders meachanism in Civ4. The player who lags the least or clicks the fastest gets his units to attack first and so on. But in a way I like it. It makes the game more interesting with fast moves and making the player have to react quickly to changing conditions. It would most likely make the game very slow if that kind of ordering system as you mentioned was implemented.


a) more spillover from science already discovered. This should offcourse depend on open borders, trade between nations, time in history etc. (you could have a lead and close borders as a valid strategy, opens up for interesting communism playstyle).

b) diminishing returns on sci production, meaning that if you double sci output learning a new sci wont be halved. This makes sence as well cosidering twice as many scientists trying to solve the same problem rarely halves the time it takes to solve it, since many of the scientists will spend time coming up with the same ideas.

Maybe I am just repeating what you are saying but I clearly agree with your ideas. Putting 500 hundred scientists on the task of finding out new technology doesn't mean that you will get the task done 500 times faster, sure it will go faster than if 1 scientist was doing it, but a diminishing return on science would be good. However this wouldn't help prevent the big civs from teching ahead would it? The other civs would also have diminishing returns on science output and thereby the whole mechanism would be quite useless.

[theis81]

..., but a diminishing return on science would be good. However this wouldn't help prevent the big civs from teching ahead would it? The other civs would also have diminishing returns on science output and thereby the whole mechanism would be quite useless.

The mechanism wouldn't be useless at all, since the diminishing effect would have more effect on the big civ compared to the small. And as I stated with the new happiness feature probably also designed to make it harder to be a big civ, it could result in staying big would depend on making the right choices in the end game and not just the first 100 turns.

[Soviet_Storm]

[QUOTE=theis81;955774]I do agree that it was a huge problem in civ IV that the big civs always ended up having the science lead as well.QUOTE]

Actually i dont think this is the case, in Civ IV i always found a few small European Civs were always the most advanced in the world, usually it would be England because they have a few big coastal cities which were low maintenance as they were so close together, also Elizabeth had financial trait and special building was stock exchange

Situation was similar for Germans who had few big coastal cities around Scandinavia, i think it was easier for small european Civs to advance in the game as they encountered eachother sooner and traded techs sooner, thus giving them an early lead

The Mali Civ was another i always found to be very advanced but small geographically, i think the reason was that their leader had financial trait and again coastal cities (even though the land around them was desert)

:eek: :eek:

[slowtarget]

Well actually for a long time, China, the largest empire of its time (pre Mongolian era), was far more advanced than any Europeon countries.

Well, "far more" is debatable, and it was really only the largest empire up to the creation of the Roman Empire, not the Mongolian Empire (as you state later). During that time, the Chinese were some of the most advanced, but then, so were the Egyptians, the Greeks, and even the Maya.


It all started after the Fall of Rome - the largest empire on Earth. Rome was far more advanced than any other civilizations, besides than the fact that they took out a lot of the others.


And before that, Egypt was the most advanced. During that period and time I guess the only civilizations in existance were Egypt and China, though. Not sure which was larger.

Egypt was never very large, they were only leading technology for a (relatively) short period and there were plenty of other large civilizations which existed before Rome. Sumer pre-dates the most well know parts of Egyptian civilization. The Indus valley was civilized about the same time as Egypt and China. For a while, the largest empire in the world was actually Persian. Then they bumped into the Greeks and Alexander the Great (Macedonian) beat them up and made the next biggest empire in the world. All of these were leaders in technology.


After the Visigoths destroyed the city of Rome, that led to the dark ages, where many barbaric tribes inhabited Europe. During this period, the largest (I'm pretty sure it was) empire, China, advanced further than Europe. Having a stabalized form of education, and inventing paper, the compass and gunpowder.

At this time, the Aztec empire was actually fairly large as well and the Middle East was just as impressive technologically as China was.


But once Mongolia reigned over half of China, things changed. I don't know much about how advanced civilization was at this point.

It was as advanced as China and the Middle East were. While most people see the Mongols as mindless barbarians (just ask anyone from Iran or Poland), they actually did a lot to encourage and spread technology. They supported the Silk Road at its height and used this and other routes to spread Chinese technology to the Middle East, Middle Eastern technology to Russia, Russian technology to India and Indian technology to China.

This isn't so different than what happened with the Roman Empire and the British Empire. Large empires often cause increased trade amongst geographically diverse people, and the resulting mix of ideas is great for technology.


After the fall of Mongolia, Europe became more civilized, and did advance as a whole.

Because Mongolia was so uncivilized?

In truth, the Mongol empire began to wane by the 1400s. It was still a hundred years or more before Europe began to enter the Renaissance. During this time, the Middle East was the technological leader (beating the somewhat flagging Aztecs) while China remained in strong contention.


I'm pretty sure this was the cause of tourism and interlapping cultures.

As others pointed out, technology is best stimulated by war and trade, in that order. War pushes people to find new solutions. Trade stimulates people to find new ways of solving problems. War and Trade are two things that most large empires have in common. Rome used trade to pay for war. The Mongols went to war in order to profit from trade. China went to war to make trade more profitable.

Alexander the Great... well, he seems to have gone to war in an effort to get his name put as many different places as possible. Sort of like an ancient Ronald Reagan.

Anyway, the point here would be to fill in some extra examples to show why it is usually the large, imperial civilizations that drive technology, not the small peaceful ones.

[KojusMaximus]

[...]
Quote:
Now my 2 cents regarding new features:
what i have always missed in Civs (my favorite game) is the "orders mechanism". VERY unrealistic. We place orders and units execute them immidietly. For example - we order scout to move, and he moves. Then we know what is tehre so we move our horseman elswhere. And so on.

There is clearly problems with the orders meachanism in Civ4. The player who lags the least or clicks the fastest gets his units to attack first and so on. But in a way I like it. It makes the game more interesting with fast moves and making the player have to react quickly to changing conditions. It would most likely make the game very slow if that kind of ordering system as you mentioned was implemented.[..]

Well in my opinion, such mechanism ("he player who lags the least or clicks the fastest gets his units to attack first") reminds me Starcraft... And we dont like it, do we? :)

I completly disagree that placing orders and having them executed at the end of the turn will make the game very slow. Unless you will need more time for thinking and predicting enemy moves - but I belive it is all about in any strategic game...
What I want to say, is that the current order mechanism is from one hand COMPLETLY unrealistic (especially in ancient times, when scouting took years (to send a scout and to have news from him back) and you had to send other units elswhere also at the same time) and from another hand - it reminds me Real Time Startegies...

My propsoition eliminates both

[Black Gate of Mordor]

At this time, the Aztec empire was actually fairly large as well and the Middle East was just as impressive technologically as China was.

The Aztecs were formed in 1427 as an alliance between three city-states of central mexico. The fall of the Western Roman Empire was in approximately 400AD. There was still another millenium before the Aztecs.

[Black Gate of Mordor]

Well in my opinion, such mechanism ("he player who lags the least or clicks the fastest gets his units to attack first") reminds me Starcraft... And we dont like it, do we? :)

I completly disagree that placing orders and having them executed at the end of the turn will make the game very slow. Unless you will need more time for thinking and predicting enemy moves - but I belive it is all about in any strategic game...
What I want to say, is that the current order mechanism is from one hand COMPLETLY unrealistic (especially in ancient times, when scouting took years (to send a scout and to have news from him back) and you had to send other units elswhere also at the same time) and from another hand - it reminds me Real Time Startegies...

My propsoition eliminates both

The idea of the order being executed at the end of the term is like some of the Age of Empires games. I agree with KojusMaximus' statement. Leave that system as it is, it's a good one.