Radical Ideas

[Brent]

What should make Civ4 a bigger leap than any of the previous games? A Spherical world? A hexgrid? 3D? Irregular tiles?

On a spherical world, would it be problematic to do maps of smaller regions?

Irregular tiles, I'm just mentioning but don't really want. How would city radii work?

[Asmodean]

Please try to keep ideas in the single idea thread for now. It will make my job a lot easier when I start to distribute the ideas to the category managers.

In the coming weekend I start doing just that, and then next week, threads are opened by the category managers for each and every category.

If you wish to be category manager, then please sign up in the sign-up thread

Asmodean

[Jon Miller]

I have thought about the idea of romiving cities

it is really ratical, but It hink that Civ would survive it

I don't like the idea of a spherical world

that would really limit scenario builders

Jon Miller

[Fosse]

Spherical world epic game, and scenarios could simply be cut out piece of the section of the sphere, the size of which the designer would decide upon. Such a map would wind up feeling like a flat map with a little curve to it, depending on how big it is.

How is it going to limit scenario designers? By allowing them accurate maps?

As for radical... I'd love to see a sphere witout any sort of tile overlay. You would tell units to go to coordinates instead.

I'd like to see struggles within your Civ, instead of only without.

How about this for radical....
No tile improvments at all. Public works (or even just cash) could be used for things like military roads and canals and bridges... but not for building one mine, or one farm, etc.
People in cities are responsible for improving their own cities, and will do so according to the tech they have. When crop rotation is discovered, crop output goes up without the player having to move a unit to the city and pushing the "Fallow" command a bunch of times.
Cities can only build improvments if they have the available money, but the player could earmark parts of the economy to be used by those cities. he could set, say, 10% of the treasury to be used by cities to subsize perhaps 70% of the cost of building mines.

Reasons for this:
*Helps AI. Part of why GalCiv AI is so good compared to Civ 3 is that the AI doesn't have to hassel with tile improvments, that the player will always be better at.
*Avoids tedium and micromanagement. Eventually, laying down road-farm-rail or road-mine-rail gets to be a real timesink and not very fun.
*More realistic and aesthically pleasing map. If tile improvments don't cover every inch of the map, the map will look better. Especially with cities dotting the landscape and their graphics representing how much improving the citizens have been able to pay for.

[Solver]

For me, the less really radical ideas, the better, really...

[Kuciwalker]

For me, the less really radical ideas, the better, really...

[Fosse]

Solver:
I'm all for radical ideas that help the game. Radical for the sake of being radical, however, will only harm us.

But think about it... culture and resources were pretty radical. Borders in SMAC were radical, just as the Planetary Council was. At least three of those four things are now - I believe - well loved, even if their implementation wasn't.

But I have to say that despite the new ideas that have come into play over the past years in Civ games, they've been growing in baby steps. I'd like to see something a little more progressive... not a radical overhaul of the games we all know and love... but Big Kid steps.

[MattH]

Originally posted by Asmodean
Please try to keep ideas in the single idea thread for now. It will make my job a lot easier when I start to distribute the ideas to the category managers.

In the coming weekend I start doing just that, and then next week, threads are opened by the category managers for each and every category.

If you wish to be category manager, then please sign up in the sign-up thread

Asmodean

Are you a minimod now? Cool.

And I think the option to have irregular tiles should exist, but a 'classic' mode for both CIV III and II should be included.

[Trifna]

Spheric world!!
If it would be done well and nice, it could really bring some immersion, hype and a bit more sense (not including the graphics ).

[Sandman]

I've been advocating a spherical world for ages. Nice to see it getting accepted.

One thing which is important is to have a flattened mini-map, so you can see the whole world at once.

The sphere thread.

[DarkCloud]

Triangular Pixels!

Or octagonal to increase the accuracy of the modeling and to maximize strategic assault patterns

[Roman]

I want Civ to stay Civ. A few radical ideas are assimilable, but too many will remove it from its glorious and successful tradition. Civ IV should have perhaps 3-5 radical ideas along the lines of how borders, culture and resources were not found in Civ II but were introduced in Civ III. Beyond that, it should be merely minor or peripheral improvements.

[Leland]

Originally posted by DarkCloud
Triangular Pixels!

Or octagonal to increase the accuracy of the modeling and to maximize strategic assault patterns

Civ tiles are already octagonal, kind of: Each has eight neighbours.

[DarkCloud]

In that case, then 16th's
Sorry for my temporary lapse. I forgot about the numeric pad movement in civ II...

[Fosse]

How about this one:

Your people select their own city sites, where they make good sense: arable land, rivers, trading crossroads.

When people are there, you see a few buildings showing a population center. When enough gather, you get a message saying they have formed a city and wish to pledge allegiance to your rule.

I would see this as existing side by side with the current settler model, but since people will only move to cities that make sense to them, you might find that your cities that are placed in poor positions (or too near better cities, perhaps) won't grow nearly as quickly as the ones with good sites.

Comments?


edited for clarity.

[MxM]

Europa Universalis type diplomacy.

Give us numerical value of the relations! Give as reasons to go to war based on our alliances! Make it so that it is practically impossible to win the war along! Make it financially difficult to go to war against country with which you have good relations! And so on...

[Donegeal]

I would support a hexgrid.

With a hexgrid, some adjustments would need to be made as there would only be 18 tiles in a city radius. Here are some suggestions (these suggestions generally have to deal with the population explosion of the late 19th/20th centuries that is so poorly represented in Civ I, II and III):

Either when a certian tech is gained or when a city reaches a predetermined population (ie: 1-6 = town, 7-12 = city, 13+ = Metropololis) the city expands to a third ring of tiles (anything more than 3, like in CTPII, I think would be too much). The increase in available tiles will reflect in a larger population and thus more accurately represent the modern age.

However, since most Civ players aren't going to space their cities 6 hexs apart to take advantage of the additonal hex ring, I would also like to see the worker job of "Build Suburb" added. As I stated in another thread, the action would consume the worker and place a "town" graphic on the grid. Now if the "Build Suburb" action was limited to the inner ring of hexs surrounding the actual city, we would get a fine graphical representation of "Urban Sprawl". Now to fix the actual population explosion problem I mentioned at the on set of this post, I would have the "Build Suburb" action add two food to the tile it is built on (now I know that building a suburb on farm land does NOT increase the food gained from that farm, but the added food will reflect a higher population in the city it is attached to to better represent the population explosion).

[Rasputin]

perhaps allowing city radius to expand none concentrically..

that is if two citys overlap , allow one city to utilise a sqaure not in its radius but still concuurent with the city, upto the maximum of the 21 squares allowed

[Donegeal]

Hmmmm.... interesting. What would determine which additional square gets used?

[Rasputin]

maybe allow the player to select it as the city grows.. but maybe time consuming a little bit of extra micromanaging.. otherwise the city governor can make the call and just expand in direction he wants..

This is olny for overlapping citys , normally the concentric rings apply

[MattH]

The concept of suburbs would also require the trading of resources- food, water, etc. Which is a good thing.

[Senator]

another radical thing
maybe a medieval: total war type thing

with nobles units and a king unit and prince units and stuff
you have to have one noble in each city for control and each has several abilities (like a noble with a lot of economy points will boost the city's gold output)
then you have titles wich you can give to your nobles and that will boost their abilities (+1 economy, +1 production) when you give them.
When you build a cathedral in london for example you can give one of your nobles the title 'bishop of london' and it would give the city he's in a +1 happiness bonus.
finally you have a king unit and the city he's in will have no corruption at all (like a palace) You will get prince units randomly and when the king dies (every 25 turns or something) the prince unit becomes a king. You will also get princess units and those can marry foreign princes. When the foreign king dies and you happen to be the next heir you get his empire.

that's how it's done in medieval: total war anyway. all ideas might not be suitable for civ, but it would be cool imo

[Agathon]

Real time, like EU2 - much better for multiplayer.

[csiphon]

How about a multiple level map, like ToT, so there is a level for land, a level for undersea, a level for orbit, and so on.

And revolts not triggered by bribe, but poor conditions or cultural issues.

random events would be nice too, like volcanic eruptions or earthquakes or floods or plagues

[Kuciwalker]

Real time, like EU2 - much better for multiplayer.

hell no

Luckily, I don't have to worry about this ever happening - Civ is a TBS, and that's that.

[Oncle Boris]

Originally posted by Roman
I want Civ to stay Civ. A few radical ideas are assimilable, but too many will remove it from its glorious and successful tradition. Civ IV should have perhaps 3-5 radical ideas along the lines of how borders, culture and resources were not found in Civ II but were introduced in Civ III. Beyond that, it should be merely minor or peripheral improvements.

Making a fun but unrealistic strategy game is quite easy, really; the real challenge is to depict human evolution in realistic terms. I want Civ4 to be a masterpiece, period. I want it to be the perfect game that will be historically accurate, yet balanced and fun to play.

I want it to have different layers of complexity that could please both the hard-core and casual gamer, depending on how much time you are willing to *invest* (waste).
Whether it does that by building on established grounds or a radical redesign, I don't give a ****.

[FrostyBoy]

This is a valid argument.

Lets face it, civ can only be made in so many ways.

It is possibly time for Civ to give birth to an entirely new way of playing.

[Kramerman]

i think they could redo the combat system totally to make it much more strategic. Whenever i play civ these days, its always the empire with the best combination of largest industrial capaicty and advanced techs amd stuff that win wars, very rarely does a strategy have much to do with it, or rather, it could have much much more to do with it.

Sure, tech and industry play a huge roll, but strategy must play a bigger role.

this is a Hearts of Iron-esque idea for a system.

I propose a system were civs build leaders much more readily, so that most military units could act as an army if wanted. and leaders have a certain skill and rank. The higher the skill of the leader (relative to the apposing leader), the higher combat modifer it gets, and the higher rank the more units it can have stacked. You can promote leaders at will, but at a large reduction of 'skill points' simulatiing the higher level of skill needed by a leader to cooridnate more units.

moral bonuses and penalties and other types of combat modifiers.

The units in a stack should not fight one at a time like armies do in civ 3, but should be combined in their attacks somehow.

also, players could have a choice to let their leaders do their battles, or they should be allowed to actual manipulate their armies in battles, in tactical display. So if i had a stack of 3 tanks and a artillery and vie to take control of the army that engages an enemy in the desert, i shoudl go to a screen of a desert battle field (randomly gernerated for each tile at map generation, but each tile should have the same tactical map for the whole game) where i can deploy my forces accordingly behind sand dunes and what not in a battle against the enemy.

these battles take place turn based as well mind you.

This should also be the same for naval engagements. I should be able to make my fleet formations in blue water battles or hide my firgate waiting in ambush in the lagoon waiting for the enemy man-o-war thats coming by looking for it.

however, if you dont want to, you can just have your battles taken care of by your leaders (genrals or admirals, as if your like me youll have a bazillion battles.

i dont know, i have a million ideas floating in my head, and they are pretty radical. you classic civ types may not care for em much, but this is in my opinon a way to make civ an even better game. The combat system has always been one of the weaker elemnts of the game for me.

[Fosse]

Originally posted by Sn00py
This is a valid argument.

Lets face it, civ can only be made in so many ways.

It is possibly time for Civ to give birth to an entirely new way of playing.

Adapt or die, right!

Seriously, I agree with this sentiment. Civ doesn't have to become a brand new game, but if it does it could very well be the better.

[Az]

I like the "build suburb" idea, but INCREASE FOOD?! WTF?! What we really need to increase is Production and trade. In civ3 those specialists were goddamn worthless.