Changes I'd like to see towards playability and fun.

[Syanis]

Making a list of changes I'd like to see to improve game play and other things.

1. Research being slower or a seperate selection to make only research slower.

(As it stands playing a game with research if you want to keep your city up to date your constantly building the newest buildings and newest wonders. Theres no time to sit back and enjoy the other aspects while also keeping your city updated as research is so damn fast. Setting on marathon doesn't change anything as it slows down production and everything else as well.)

2. Being able to build and collect on a tile say 4-5 tiles outside your city only to collect whatever resource.

(often find myself trying not to build to many cities as in past civ games because of mass unhappiness however end up having an annoyance trying to claim resources outside my 3 tile limit. Not asking for 10 tiles away but maybe 4-5 tiles away we can build like a harvest camp that has no benefit out then getting us that resource... that could be stolen if an AI builds close enough to claim.)

3. Production and research carry over.

(annoying finishing a project and losing those extra hammers and flasks to nothingness or having an AI civ beat you to a wonder you just spend 40 turns working on)

4. Improvement to he AI.

(need I say more? Not once have I had an AI declare war on me unless I attack an allied city-state or one they pledged to protect. They may demand and threaten and get a pouty face quite often but to cowardly to do anything even when their military numbers are greater then mine. Some AI's need a war mongering idea added to there heads where they want to be at war. Like the Mongals or a couple others who simply enjoy ar mongering... least in the AI.)

5. War mongering improved from above.

(For improving some civs that lack vs others some should get a minor bonus's when war mongering. Improved happiness maybe while at war or improved production or gold. Some like civs just enjoy war to damn much or one would think)

6. Better map layouts. Smarter start location layouts.

(wtf is with the endless sea of sand we see or endless mountain ranges. Also we all take our time to restart maps looking for a half decent start spot depending on each of our playstyles. However some simply blow. I've started in the center of a desert numerous times with 1 oasis and ivory/insense nearby. No room for growing, no hills even just a flat desert. I've seen City states and even the AI once start on a 1 tile size island when playing an island map (not tiny islands mind you).

7. I'd love to see production changed into a building and unit production line (unless research is slowed down significantly)

(we to often get caught up having to play a game with 1 specific strat in mind for victory rather then a broader plan and we have to play that way from turn 1. Seperating production line would allow a much more in depth playability and replayability as offers us much more we can do in each game. We can war monger and take out a couple civs with a large army, we can build up a culture center, research and the works. Still it won't be as fast matter what as a 1 way strat but more fun. Could even make it a classical+ research option where you research an improved production line of a sort that puts 2 production queues up 1 for units and 1 for buildings.

[Jazzterisk]

2. Being able to build and collect on a tile say 4-5 tiles outside your city only to collect whatever resource.

(often find myself trying not to build to many cities as in past civ games because of mass unhappiness however end up having an annoyance trying to claim resources outside my 3 tile limit. Not asking for 10 tiles away but maybe 4-5 tiles away we can build like a harvest camp that has no benefit out then getting us that resource... that could be stolen if an AI builds close enough to claim.)

I like the idea of being able to build a camp to get access to resources out of your cultural control however I don't know how useful they'd be given the present state of the game. What I mean is the computer civs expand at such a fast rate which in turn forces you to build cities as well that any resource not under some sort of control would become so quickly.

I suppose if the computer was able to use this new camp feature rather than building a city to capture a resource it may work.

I believe Civ III had a feature like this but it rarely was useful for the same reason.

[Taciturn Scot]

Yes, Civ 3 had colonies. You could expend a worker in a tile that contained a resource and he would create a colony. It had to be attached to one of your cities via a road though. I'd be happy if something like this could be reintroduced.

Good suggestions. I would like to add a couple of my own:

Barbarians

At the moment Barbarians don't appear to heal which makes taking them out even easier than it should be. Allow them to heal.

Barbarian archers don't fire at my units when they are in range of their encampment. Allow them to fire.

Abolish the combat bonus for Civs fighting against Barbarians at Prince level and award them bonuses when the difficulty level is King or higher. I'm sure this is already in, it just needs to be adjusted so that Barbarians have a level playing field at Prince.

Have them skedaddle to safety once they have raized one of the improvement tiles. I hate the way the wander around inside my city boundaries getting shot at by the city defences.

Specialists
Allow the Artist specialist to create 2 culture points instead of 1. It just doesn't seem to be worth the effort to create these specialists.

Social Policies
Probably an unpopular suggestion but have the Two bonus Techs/Social Policies only become available after every other part of the Social Policy branch is completed.

National Wonders

I'd like to have some sort of Wall Street wonder become available once I have built Stock Markets in all my cities.

Something for having Hospitals in all your cities would be interesting as well. Not sure exactly what yet... Perhaps something that awards all combat units built in that city with a Heal improvement.

The Iron Works is a bit underpowered and could do with a wee boost. Even 25% would be better than 20%