I have a couple of questions about civ concepts that I'm not clear on. If anyone could help, I'd really appreciate it.
1) For purposes of wonders, etc., what does the game consider a continent? is any land connected, no matter how thinly, a continent? In other words, if you have the real-world map, for example, in civ3, would europe, asia, africa and the middle east all be considered one continent, since they are all connected? would south and north america be a single continent?
2) Concerning the effects on corruption of a palace and forbidden palace, do the ranges change if you are playing on a larger/smaller map size than the standard? In other words, is it a proportional thing, or would a palace's range on corruption be same, regardless of map size?
3) I know razing cities is supposed to lower world opinion of your civilization, but it doesn't seem to have a huge effect. I know the design needs to value gameplay over realism, but razing a city, even a mid-sized city in the real world, especially in modern times would essentially bring the wrath of the world on a nation's head.
Okay, a couple of suggestions. I don't think these are repetitive of people's past suggestions.
A) How about some units that each civ can only build one of? These would be the equivalent of small wonders, but in Unit form. They wouldn't be anything necessarily game-breaking, but here are a couple of examples:
a) a circus/traveling entertainer unit, that has one movement, no attack/defense value, and each turn that it would be fortified in a city, it would make one or two additional citizens in that city happy, or content.
b) some kind of Internal Affairs/IRS/Attorney General unit, that would reduce corruption by some percentage(say 25%) when fortified in a city, as above, with the same attack/defense/move values.
c) maybe a special forces unit, or special leader, different from the Great Leaders in the game already, that would give a slight combat bonus to combat units in the same tile.
B) The game's programming can generate random results/chances, right? Well, I would like a little more randomness in the game, after all, this shouldn't just become a numbers-crunching exercise. How about Mother Nature being reflected in the game, in the form of a few extreme weather phenomena (e.g., hurricane, tsunami, tornado) that would have VERY low-percentage chances of happening, but when they did, would cause a certain amount of damage to whatever tile it occurred in, to improvements, units, and cities.
On the same randomness note, how about incorporating differing religions in the game, on one of two levels:
(By the way, if anyone is offended by this idea, I'm sorry, and please stop reading............now. )
Have another random event, this one called "Prophet". This event should be extremely random(should happen 3 times or less per game, worldwide). If the probability hits, a prophet has been found who has inspired the people, and whose effect will be ever-lasting. For civ score purposes, the location and surrounding area of the prophet event would be worth more than normal land.
In addition, if you really wanted to go crazy, you could use the same idea of nationalities, where citizens are part of a specific religion, which could cause further problems in trying to maintain the happiness of citizens. If your citizens are the same religion as another civilization's that you are at war with, your people could be more unhappy than normal. On the same note, being at war with an opposing religion could lessen the effects of war weariness, or actually make your citizens call for war if you are at peace.
