Information - Civ 4: The List
General Ideas
General Ideas
-DarkCloud
Introduction
Here's the section for General Ideas, Ideas that either transcend all the other categories,
or just don't quite fit under any of the other topics.
Thanks for reading,
-List Threadmaster DarkCloud
Summary
Well, the best way to read this section is to read the titles, as varied as
they are because they’ll give you some idea of what you’re up against. The ideas
are so varied that it’s hard to give a summary to this section. This is where
everything that did not quite fit went to ‘fit’ itself.
Related Threads
Growth - Should it be Related to Food ,
frenzyfol
Terrorism , grap 1705
Advisors and Magistrates , skycommando
Get Rid of Building Every Improvement
Everywhere , polypheus
Index
1.0.0- Radical Ideas; Game Structure
2.0.0- Animation/Theming/Graphics
3.0.0- Automation/Programming
4.0.0- Characterization/Historical/Realistic
5.0.0- Maps/Display
Conclusion
The Ideas
1.0.0 Radical Ideas; Game Structure
1.1.0 Scenario/ Civ-Splitting/ Complete Reworking of Civ-Rules/Structure
*From another thread, the first time
you play Civ4, only a few large, major civs are available to start with, such as
Chinese, Semites, Indoeuropeans. To keep from having the same exact group of
civs for the whole game, there would be breakoffs. Indoeuropeans can split into
Romans, Celts, Germans, Slavs, Indians, etc. The idea for winning the game would
be to have the culture group created by you and your breakoffs control the
world. On your next game, either the first generation of breakoffs or all
breakoffs for that last game are available to start with. The civs you identify
with would tend to be created because of the civs you previously chose. Ingame,
give the player a message when a minor civ breaks off, asking if you want it to
become a playable civ for future games. When this happens, give the player a
readout of the civ's stats to edit if desired, or stats could be filled out
later in the editor.
*Traits chosen for your political party become standard
traits for breakoff civs. Maybe combine and balance political traits with civ
traits.
*Semites can split into Hebrews, Egyptians, Hyksos, Berbers, Babylonians.
Hebrews split into Israelites, Arabs, Midianites, Edomites. Judah can split off
from Israel. Maybe Israel splits into a separate civ for each of Jacob's wives.
Maybe Rachel and Leah start as one splitoff. Leah splits into Judah, Simeon,
Reuben, etc. Judah splits into Zarah, Phares, and Shelah, or Sephards and
Ashkenazi. Arabs split into Libyans, Saudis, Iraqis.
*There can be confederacies, such as Switzerland, and the Philipines can be
treated as one too. A confederacy is a group of minor tribes that start near
each other. It is assumed that they will use diplomacy to merge eventually. The
Philipines would only show up on a large Far East or random map. They could also
have their own scenario. The Swiss could be a cohesive civ on any map or a
confederacy on a large random map. They could have their own scenario or be part
of a German scenario.
*Using a similar system to GalCiv, have standard traits for each civ plus the
player chooses extra traits for a political party or a specific leader, and
these bonus traits could be lost with a change of politics. The player can set a
number of points for all civs in the game.
Macroculturegroups: Africa, Asia, America, Europe.
Africa: East, North, West, Central.
Asia: Arab, Mesopotamia, Central, Far East, Caucasus, Southeast, India,
Himilayas, Palestine.
America: Eastern Woodlands, Great Plains, Southwest, California, Mesoamerica,
South America
Europe: Iberia, German, Celtic, British Isles, Scandinavia, Slavic, Italic,
Balkan, Alps.
Independant medium- level culture groups: Pacific, Arctic, Siberia (with
overlap).
Currently I say anywhere from 8 to 64 Major civs and about 200 minors. I don't
care if the civs I like have uniqueness, but I want most of them to have plenty
of city names.
(Ed: This idea would work as a special
scenario for civ and would really change the game mechanics. Personally, I don't
think it would add much, but it would certainly inject a more arcade-feel into
the game and be something completely new!)
-Brent
In pregame setup, be able to specify that each culture group start on its
own landmass, or group them by hemisphere. Maybe be able to give each civ its
own landmass. Be more precise with culturally linked starting locations. Maybe
have an optional small cookie cutter starting region for each civ that could be
inserted into random maps, but on large maps make sure most of thje map is
random and disallow cookie cutter starting regions on small maps.
-Brent
1.2.0 Weather
I think it would be kewl to add climate values to terrain types and setting
a probability to that tile that weather behaves a certain way during an action
and possibly during a non-action. Having earthquakes, storms, tornadoes,
tsunami's could be cool, especially during a battle. There would have to be an
indicator for you to know what that probability is at that time
-Japher
1.3.0 Events
Events
-El Awrence
1.4.0 Border Wars
Border skirmishes, international incidents, whatever you want to call them.
Reduce the chance of an AI declaring war when that exploring warrior gets
knocked off or settler team gets bopped from 100% to, well, something less.
Basically, it gives the victim a chance to avoid severe harm by backing down,
while retaining the opportunity to open up a can on the perpetrator, depending
on the situation. It also adds an element of decision, not only with the obvious
"Carthage just knocked off my settler, but do I really want to tangle with mercs
before I have iron?", but also with how close you may want to tread to the Celt
borders and whether or not you want to chance Persia declaring war by hitting
the settlers about that grab that juicy spot you've had your eye on.
Multiple incidents between two civs would have a cumulative effect, increasing
the chance of war each time. Attacks within the victim civ's borders would be
grounds for automatic declaration, to close some exploit possibilities. Non-war
declaring attacks would not be eligible for MGL generation, and possibly not for
promotions, either, though I could see a case for allowing them. I have no idea
how much tweaking it would take for the AI to be able to use it effectively, but
it doesn't seem like it would be much.
-Solomwi
1.5.0 Multistates Idea (A la Europa Universalis)
You start on a POPULATED world with 50-100 tribes.But you will choose only
7-8 main nations (like in "European Universalis"), who will actively
develope.All others are just tribes whose business is only protect their home.
Every tribe has it's own special units , techs (CONNECTED to global tech tree)
and buildings.
-$TaLuHgPad
1.6.0 Multinational Corporations
I think a great feature that could be impliment in Civ 4 is the appearance of
Multi National Corperations - they are after all the pinnicle of globalisation.
Basically my way of implementing would be allowing an advanced City in the
Modern age have a small chance each turn that a MNC will setup HQ in thier city.
The Following things will be eligibility Criteria:
The Presence of a Bank
The Discovery of a certain modern age tech
No resistors
City size at least 7
While the following would significantly give you better chance of attracting an
MNC:
The Presence of a Stock Exchange
The Presence of any Economic wonders (Ie Adam Smiths,Internet ect)
A High amount of Trade in the City
A larger population
The presence of capitalist specialists
The peace rating of a Country (ie the less war, or preferably no war the better)
The peace rating of the City (Is it on a warfront? has it been in resistance or
disorder?)
A high national GNP
The City having Capital status
Possibly there could be more factors, either way the better the city is geared
up trade wise, and the stability overall of the location will give a good chance
on any given of getting an MNC. MNC's will provide several trade benefits, at
it's simplest they could provide Gold Per Turn benefits, possibly they also
could be prerequisites to a Wonder like Wall Street for example. This isnt a
gimmick, MNC's are absolutly crucial to the commercial sucess of nations and
would compliment a Builder style of play giving players an extra factor to
consider.
-Worthington
1.7.0 "Managed" Empires over "Expansive" Empires
Anyone find it annoying that you can't have a small, powerful civilization.
As time goes on the Civ. with the most land wins. Management should have a
greater impact than geographical size. At least that's how I feel
I think that this can exist in many ways:
- How divided your empire is (the wider...)
- Frictions (intern and extern) because of conflicts with foreign ideologies
- Management (think of the Turcs at the end)
- Cost of newly acquired territory (think of Israel vs Palestine, Soviets in
Afghanistan...)
- etc.
-Andromel/Trifna
1.7.1 Traits as a way toward "Managed" Empires
Micro management trait: Empires with this trait try to manage all details of
there empire. As a result does it take them longer to make new cities(settles
needs much longer to build) and shall they improve there land at a slower speed.
But this micro management improves the efficienty of there cities and terrain
improvements allowing them to produce more food/trade.
city state trait: this empire is completely build arround 1 or a few gigantic
cities who have a great amount of autonomy. The huge amount of autonomy of the
cities makes there population very happy and let your cities develop there own
culture and science increasing the effect of both. But people love there own
city so much that it is very hard to convince them to move to another city
dramatically lowering the cultural assimilation rate of newly conquered cities.
-kolpo
1.8.0 Dark Ages
Now these may have been suggested before (dark ages almost definitley) but
just in case they haven't I figured I'd submit them.
Right, firstly I was thinking that all civilizations have their downs as well as
ups, so what about a negative version of the golden age?
ie, if you suffer many defeats, get into financial trouble (ie. you have to sell
off quite a few buildings) you get put into a dark age, where tech slows, cash
flow dries up, production grinds to a halt etc.
Now this could make the game quite punishing, so maybe only include it at higher
difficulty levels and maybe make it much less likely after the industrial
revolution (or maybe replace it with depression, which only affects finances).
-Comrade Raoul
1.9.0 Relating Population Growth to Avaliability of Resources
1.9.1 Food/ Arable Land
Personally, I would, for simplicitys sake go with the historical factor of
growth being directly related to the proportion of arable land. Those lands with
more avaliable food had larger populations than those which did not.
-DarkCloud
Food shortages or even only small food surpluses cause extra unhappy
citizens.
The reasons that even small food surpluses would cause an amount of unhappy
citizens would be because you can see the food output as the average output over
many years, which in overal would be slightly surplus, but while in fact it's a
variation of good harvests and famines. The latter would cause unhappiness.
These effects could be reduced by building a granary.
-Maniac
1.9.1.1 Food is Auto-Traded Throughout the Empire
Players should be able to vector surplus food towards other cities, via a
central 'food pool'! (Therefore, no city would starve, because its surpluses
would be sent to nearby cities.)
-The_Aussie_Lurker
1.9.1.2 Raw Food into Processed Food
The second system is by converting 'raw' food into 'processed' or
'manufactured' food. Like increasing food rations, this increases happiness, but
reduces population growth (consider processed food as luxury foods and fast
food!)
-The_Aussie_Lurker
1.9.2 Wealth
I think that, based on what I see in the real world, population growth should
be in part inversely proportional to a city's wealth. Just have a look at some
of the poorest cities in the world, and you see that they also have VERY high
population growths as well!
-The_Aussie_Lurker
1.9.3 Trade
Many cities grew overnight in what would be Civ 3 terms... the reason for
that was trade much more than nearby fields.
Food should be something that you provide for the many people who choose to live
in your city, not the only reason tha they are there.
-Fosse
1.9.3.1 Allow Food to Be Traded!
Civ 2 Trading Framework worked much better for this desired feature. If you
have a "bread basket" city producing bunches of food, you could send a caravan
with food to another city in your empire. I miss that ability.
-Shogun Gunner
1.9.4 Rural/Urban Population Contribuites to Food Levels
I was wondering, would it be too complex to separate rural from urban
population? The rural pop. would be the one which farms, fishes, and hunts for
food; collects mineral resources; and collects lumber. The urban pop. would
consist of specialists, artisans, merchants, labourers, and other urban-type
occupations. Urban labourers would be the ones who convert resources into
'shields' or production. The other occupations would have their own uses.
Early city growth would come from rural-to-urban migration (urbanization),
triggered by food surpluses. Both (urban and rural) populations would also grow
with births minus deaths.
Certain advances and city improvements could increase the rates of urbanization.
Advances which increase the rate of food production, such as crop rotation or
the heavy horse plow, would increase urbanization as would industrialization.
Improvements, such as factories, would also increase urbanization on a local
scale.
Improvements in nutrition, medicine, sanitation, etc. would decrease death rates
(while things such as pollution could increase death rates). Birth control and
education would decrease births.
As far as larger-scale migration goes, people should be drawn to cities along
trade routes (including major ports), cities near certain resources (like gold),
capital cities, etc.
-Xorbon
1) Assume that population goes up as a 'decimal-like' system, rather than a
direct integer (as per my earlier post).
2) Each terrain improvement will have a 'maintainance' cost and a 'population'
(read staffing) cost. Also production, education and resource city improvements
will have a set 'staffing cost' as well.
3) A city will be able to build multiple libraries, factories, banks etc. Though
multiple copies of an improvement will be subject to the 'law of diminishing
returns'.
4) Each city will have both a city SIZE (which determines if a city is
overpopulated or not) and a city population no.
5) When a city is first built, the vast bulk of your population will be required
to forage for food, fish and resources (i.e., working the hexes in your city
radius)-this population requirement will increase as you build farms, mines and
fisheries on these hexes.
6) As you build more improvements in your city, though, more of your population
will be needed to man these instead. At the same time, as you upgrade your
mines, fisheries and farms through the ages, the population costs for these
terrain improvements will decline.
7) The combination of effects described in (6) can very adequately represent the
movement of population from rural to urban centres. A time might even come where
a city recieves almost ALL of its food and shields from outside sources, and can
therefore focus ALL of its population on commerce and/or education.
8) Of course, due to monetary or resource constraints, you may have too much
population for the total number of terrain/city improvements. If this happens,
then unemployment will result-which will make the people in that city unhappy.
9) Another problem is that your population could potentially get larger than
your current city size, which will lead to crime and pollution (both of which
will lead to unhappiness!)
10) Migration should occur along trade routes, from high population to low
population areas. The rate and direction of these movements, however, would be
influenced by some of the factors mentioned by Xorbon-such as happiness, bonus
resources, crime/pollution levels/unemployment levels and the like.
-The_Aussie_Lurker
1.9.5 Social Engineering Population Growth
It should be possible to alter population growth through social engineering.
For instance, you should be able to set a base 'fertility' rate, from 0-4. Also,
the more secular your society, the lower the base fertility rate will be.
Lastly, the amount of money you assign to education/science, welfare and health
will also impact population growth. Of course, this all comes together with both
food and available fresh water to determine TOTAL population growth!
-The_Aussie_Lurker
1.9.6 Other Factors
Growth should be based on real world formulas, with the avilability of food
being one of the factors, but not the only one, You should be able to outpace
your food supply as your population grows-and thus causing instability.
1.10.0 "Staffing Buildings" (a la Colonization)
I would love a system in civ that allowed you to assign workers like in
Colonization-each building not only has a resource cost but a staffing cost (so
a tiny city will not have a stock exchange no matter what you do), a minimum pop
to meet and a number of pop. points minimal to use. You can always assing more
pop. point to it, to diversify the economy and increase a specific output. You
could also use certain squares of terrain more heavily than others-so fi you
want 10 citizens working at a food rich square, you can and production
increases. Obviously, tech levels determine how many people you need as a
minimum to start a specific structure, how many can staff, how many can be
assigned to a structure or square, and what the returns are: example, early in
the game you might assing 5 people to farm a square, but the returns decline
rapidly with each new on and there is a cap to total production-in the future, a
single person would be sufficient to do the same work and even more as
technology improves-freeing population up from economic production.
Obviosuly you need pop points to staff military units, so again, some tiny city
in the middle of nowhere, no matter how reasource rich, will not the be the
grand military center of your empire.
-GePap
2.0.0 Animation/Theming/Graphics
2.1.0 Animated Leaderheads
Please, get them out. Hundreds of megabytes for NOTHING. I'd find the
atmosphere much more immersive with a simple realistic portrait and richer
messages (as opposed to the jokey junk in Civ III).
-Fosse/GePap/DarkCloud and hopefully many more players
3.0.0 Automation/Programming
3.1.0 Game Reporting
Be able to specify in what order your cities will report: chronological by
founding, geographical, alphabetical, by size, by what is reported, other
criteria. Have similar options for units.
-Brent
3.2.0 Unit Automation
Be able to automate any aspect of the game.
-Brent
3.3.0 PDA Capability
It would be well taht Civ IV possess utilities for PDAs, in this it could
pick up information of the game and with tools, continues playing and later
update them to the PC.
Personally I have created applications in this sense or to allow the use of the
code of autosave so that the user can take out more yield of the own game by
means of the creation of such applications (always without spirit of lucre).
-Amom76
3.4.0 Statistical Editing
Civ IV should contain more stadistical establishing and intimized ranking,
as well as, graphics of progression and comparative of the same one and even
others as production of shields or culture of a certain city.
-Amom76
3.5.0 Statistics
Civ IV should posses a database of the games and to offer summaries,
stadistics and graphs of differents aspects of the game during the game.
The database of game of Civ II are very limited, I don't only want to know how
many points I obtained in a game. I would like to see a classification of my
orderly game for territories or literacy, culture.. and even to observe then in
a graph.
-Amom76
3.6.0 Tailoring the Game at Startup
Be able to enter in the desired game length and have the game make
suggestions for pregame options. The game can take into account game lengths and
options for games you've previously played. It can also scale research and build
times for you, and movement rates.
Have the game make suggestions during setup based on the options you've chosen
so far, like which civs would be good rivals for the one you're playing as based
on history and game characteristics. Let it make suggestions concerning number
of civs and terrain.
-Brent
3.7.0 Pattern of City Development
I think it is really hard and boring to build in EVERY city
"defendingUnit1-barrack-granary-marketplace-cityWalls-temple-factory-bank-..."
scheme. So my idea is to make some pattern and add to city option "pattern
option" - you choose one of the saved patterns and your city developes by this
pattern scheme.
-$TaLuHgPad
3.8.0 Improving City Governors
When a City is managed by the Governer there should be an option to switch to
building a Worker if the city will lose a Citizen due to low food. There should
be 3 options, Automatically Switch, Prompt or No Action
-centimetre
3.9.0 Growing City Radius
I'd like to see the city radius not be based on the traditional "two squares
away" map. it should grow as the city does. if the map is going to be three
dimensional, this shouldn't be a problem.
-self biased
3.10.0 Enemies' Moves
Is a "Dont watch allies/peace/enemies moves" (except combat) too much to ask
for? (wasn't for SMAC)
-Blake
4.0.0 Characterization/Historic/Realistic
4.1.0 Realistic Population Lists
Have one settler unit represent only 1000 people, or be able to change this
in the editor, along with the amount of land a square represents and such
things.
-Brent
4.2.0 Food Bars for Units
Settlers should have a "food bar", like a unit's power bar, and this should
deplete for each turn the settler is outside of its borders. 7 or 8 turns and an
ancient settler is dead.
As technology improves we should get new settlers that last longer, and units
like galleons where settlers can ride without their food bar depleting.
Such a mechanism would make for a more rational expansion of empires.
-Heffalump
I think settlers should deplete their food bar every turn even if they're on
a galleon. For a long time, people on open sea had big problems with scorbic.
Since galleons are faster then settlers on land, this alone is an improvement.
-Max Sinister
4.3.0 Plagues and Famines
The original Civ had these. I'd like to see them come back, in a more
rigorous way. Plagues should spread along trade routes and linger, depressing
commerce and construction and occasionally killing off a population point.
Medicine, Chemistry, and Sanitation would all help combat plagues.
In addition to people-plagues, there should be blights and hordes of locusts and
rats that strike at grain-stores. Pottery would help reduce these. Construction
would help more. Electricity (refrigeration) would help a whole lot.
-StefanJ
How about an exchange of diseases when you encounter civs from another
landmass?
-Brent
You could probably get away with having plagues start most often in ports
and jungle cities.
-StefanJ
5.0.0 Maps/Display
5.1.0 Map Display
Be able to choose what to show and what not to show on the replay map:
terrain, cities, etc. Be able to limit the replay map to areas you have
explored. Be able to watch explored territory grow.
-Brent
5.2.0 Exploration/Contacts Become Outdated
I'd like to see contacts with certain other civs being limited to a certain
amount of time. It would simply run out after a certain time, and you would have
to establish or buy the contact again.
This may be affected by:
Distance between my capital and the other civ's capital - the further we're
apart, the shorter the contact period will be.
Trade - if we're trading resources, contact should remain stable.
Borders - if we have a common border, contact should remain stable.
Embassies - if we have established an embassy, contact should remain stable.
Technology - if we have certain (communication-type) techs, contact should
remain stable.
Units present - I figure each civilization would have a supply / contact radius,
determined by transportation and food technologies. Rivers and coastlines would
be natural channels of supply and communication.
Outside of this, units would have to forage (slow movement, susceptible to
disease and disaster) and communication would be spotty. A unit that stumbles on
another civ would get only a brief traveller's tale sort of report.
Alliance - Could expire after a certain amount of turns without contact between
the two civilizations.
This will make contacts with your immediate neighbours more valueable, since you
need them to (re)gain contact with their neighbours.
Also, it will encourage trade.
And - it may become profitable to establish a colony (city) far away to keep in
touch with other civs.
This may also influence your World Map -- some detailed information will simple
go away after some time.
-BigFurryMonster/StefanJ
5.3.0 Ease of Game Display
You see, in civ, You don't know what game is the sav, until You open it. I
think it would be very nice if it was like in Imperialism II,
when if You click on a sav, You get information about it, and a screenshot of
the game.
-Heresson
Conclusion
Well, as you have read, the General Ideas have been varied and broad,
contribuited by a lot of people with differing opinions. I have tried to ensure
that most of the ideas did not contradict each other, but there are many options
for Firaxis to follow if it so wishes.
The main demand, I think, was to make the game more accessible and more
streamlined, whether it be with images of the map displayed for saves, or for
streamlining the production process with a system of saved 'patterns' or just an
expanded "city manager/governor" system a la that imployed by Alpha Centauri.
-Respectfully Compiled: DarkCloud
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