My long list of improvements.

[MonsterMan]

Available here, for easier reading.
http://www.overvikt.se/civ_pj.htm

My Ideas for Civilization

In my opinion, there are three major problems with Civilization III.

1) The tedium of moving units individually, especially workers.
2) The boring latter stages of the game.
3) The way end of turns are handled.


Number One: I cover this in detail below, under ARMIES and WORKER REWORKED and also CHOOSING THE SIZE.

Number Two: Covered under ZOOM THE GAME, ON A RELATED NOTE... and EXPANDING THE GAME

Number Three: As everyone not running a gigahertz PC knows, moving from one turn to the next becomes excruciatingly slow as the game progresses. Personally I'm around 1500 AD and it takes a full fifteen minutes to start a new turn. Now, I just have a 333Mhz Pentium-II (albeit with 320Mb ram), but I'm lucky to play ten turns a day - and that's on the weekend. It's not only the game's fault since I decided to play on a 250x250 map with 12 opponents, but I have a few ideas which would really help the situation.

Split the turn change into two parts.

In the first part, all enemy unit moves are made. If something terrible happens and the player wants to reload an old game, he can do so when all those moves are done and doesn't have to wait for all the build order queries.
In the second part, the computer does a lot of thinking, and presents reports from all cities in the empire that completed a construction in that turn. This way the player can leave his PC and have a smoke (or whatever), and when he returns the game is ready for his decisions.
The following is a preference the player can specify, because not everyone may desire it. The player can select that all automatic moves he has ordered be carried out from beneath the report screen thus eliminating the minutes of watching units move, while the player is doing something else.
With my long turns I often leave the computer and watch TV for half an hour, and I'd be happy if the game took care of this while I'm having fun elsewhere.


ZOOM THE GAME



By splitting a current tile in four pieces, you may find that you have a diversity of landscape features to choose from which are too small in size to be seen on the current scale.

Zooming the game also allows for a jump in city radius, because the world is now much larger, and doing this will prevent the number of cities from growing as much they otherwise would. Assuming the rules stay the same, a new limit could be set at size 20, where the city needs a proposed "Ultrarapid Metro" improvement to grow further. This improvement is slightly futuristic and based on maglev technology (in use today), where the train hover over the track by magnetism, greatly increasing the speed. By using this system, citizens that used to live too far away can now commute to the city every day.

This new jump in city radius will bring all tiles within three tiles distance (including diagonal) under control, assuming they are also within the city's cultural borders. I find it hard to believe many cities will have a cultural border less than three tiles by the time this improvement can be built, though.

What about the sea?
Good question. A fast subway doesn't help workers reach far-off fishing grounds, and speedboats aren't ideal for industrial fishing. We could investigate if the fishing boats of today are fast enough to go three tiles and back in reasonable time. Of course, if you like my 'zoom the game' idea, the distance of tiles won't be as great as it is in Civilization III. Inland cities won't be able to take advantage of this, probably. This third step will also open up Ocean tiles to improvements, resources etc.

What benefits will the new city radius give players of Civilization?
Smart players will found their cities so that later in the game, they will fit perfectly when the last city radius jump is made. Because resources still become available with cultural borders, it won't create a need to pack cities closer. For the average player, this will mean more wilderness in their empire, and the sense that the civilization is always evolving, ever-changing. Instead of neatly packed towns, we may see desolate areas between places of power. And that in itself would be very nice.

After the railroad system is done, I often feel those cities are nicely tucked away in a quiet part of the empire, and it's easy to forget about them. Perhaps it's so quiet because I've played the game a lot and my rival civs are too intimidated to try an assault in the heart of the empire. Or because I don't play with Domination victory on. But whatever the reason, any steps to liven things up (in a friendly way) would be lovely.

This leads to my next idea on composite tiles, which isn't more complicated than the tile being part one terrain and part another. Interestingly, it is already used in Civ3, but it is only a graphical effect.

An example is 50% saltwater and 50% land - which translates to coast. 25% saltwater and 75% land becomes a Bay perhaps, while the reverse might be a small peninsula. I'm not the one to judge what Food/Shields/Commerce these sorts of tiles should have. A change like this will in my opinion make the playing world more intricate and more challenging - but in a fun way! Adding to the fun, at least for me, will be the wysiwyg interpretation of the map.



TRIPLE-LAYERED TILES



I propose an approach to (land) tiles as comprised of three layers; basic, climate and vegetation.

A basic tile is what the ground is mostly composed of; water, dirt or rock. The basic tile is evolved by adding climate, and these two are then affected by possible vegetation.

Climate comes in six flavors; arctic, subarctic, temperate, warm, subtropical and tropical. This would roughly correlate to Antarctica, Siberia, north Germany, Italy, north-africa and Ethiopia. So if Dirt is the basic tile, we get 'Arctic Land', 'Tundra', 'Grassland', 'Plains', 'Steppe' and 'Savannah'. These are not absolute, because Congo has fertile rain forests while Somalia is mostly desert, yet they lie on the same longitude. Here are some of my proposals:

Dirt Rock Water
arctic Arctic Land*** Wasteland Glacier
subarctic Tundra Mountains Frozen lake*
temperate Grassland Hills/Mountains Bog
warm Grassland/Plains Hills/Mountains Swamp
subtropical Steppe Stone desert Lagoon
tropical Savannah Desert Dead lake**
* Similar to tundra in bonuses with one extra food.
** Desert tile with different graphics.
*** Unlike glacier, arctic land can be mined.

Vegetation adds variety and complexity, in a good way. I'm sure I don't need to delve into that, it's probably quite clear that pine forests can grow on tundra, shrubbery on plains etc. But one idea is that vegetation can exist on water tiles as well. Seaweed and algea is thought to be an important part of feeding the next generation, and in the modern era an advance can reveal what arable vegetation exists in the sea.

I don't know if this model is useful to you in making Civ IV, but it might be :-)



With my 'Zoom the game' idea in mind, I thought of some terrain features which would be fun for me to see.

* Volcanoes on mountains
At the start of the game, volcanoes are given preset eruption dates, which destroys everything on the tile it hits. The tile turns into stone desert for 20 turns, then becomes Plains. A separate graphic for those plain tiles is a good idea.

* Geysers on tundra
Within 3x3 radius workers can irrigate the land, which takes twice as long as it normally would -- but on the other hand, those tiles become grassland or plains. Exactly what they can become is preset from the start of the game.

* Oasis in deserts
Gives extra food and acts as a fresh water source for growth, but not for irrigation.

* Plateaus on mountains
Appears now and then in mountain ranges, and is suitable sites for cities. Limited agriculture yields one food on the tile, but only if the city is built on it.

* Ruins from lost civilizations
Ruins appear sporadically, with a limit of two per continent. Ruins can also be created if a city with more than 100 culture points is raized. The tile gives off one culture point each turn to the city that controls it, whether the tile is worked on or not. Ruins can't be destroyed, because the civilization will know that ancient people used to live there and artifacts are in museums to prove it, and that knowledge is as powerful as the ruins themselves. I don't think this idea alone will make players raize cities; keeping it and hurrying a temple will be more effective from that standpoint. Those ruins are mostly meant to be a fond memory of former wars for the player. Also, the terrain info box will list what city used to be there and to what civilization it belonged to.
By the way, building a city on top of ruins doesn't destroy their culture effect.



WORKER REWORKED



I propose that the worker system be reworked, pardon the pun. The fun of moving workers is a fleeting one, and it doesn't take a long time for any player before using workers is the most tedious and dull part of the game. And I believe that if a system is worked out that removes the use of worker units, players will find they have "free time" to devote to other aspects of the game which in turn you can make more intricate and fun.

I have some ideas on this matter :-)

It starts off as usual with a city building a worker and losing one population point, but instead of producing a worker unit, the worker is added to a Public Works Pool. This pool represent group of peasants (workers) which you are paying to do public works. All cities on the same continent can use these workers.

Workers from the Public Works Pool can be relocated to cities on other continents, provided the usual requirements are met (the player has discovered ship types which can travel to it; i.e., cities founded by settlers on galleys that have cheated death to reach a new landmass won't be able to borrow workers, though they can of course build their own.). Perhaps relocation should take a few turns.

Tile improvements can be built from a revamped city screen. For instance, to the left of the minimap one could have a vertical row of buttons. Clicking a button cleans the map of food and shield icons, and when the cursor hovers over a tile, the improvement is shown greyed out together with a number stating how many turns it will take before the improvement is complete. If the mouse button is clicked, a worker is subtracted from the pool and work begins. Click the same button again, select the same tile and click, and work on the tile is speeded up (which subtracts another worker from the pool). At the bottom of the vertical row of buttons, the number of available workers on the continent is shown.

It's an established strategy that before hospitals are invented, to keep size 12 cities producing workers. After the city grows back to size 12, another worker is produced, and so on. While this strategy will be costly in paying all the workers, it will really pay off when railroads are laden on the continent in three turns, then again when hospitals let those workers bring every city up to size 20 or more in a single turn.
This idea will remedy that since workers can no longer join cities. They might be disbanded for twice their shield costs (a total of 20) which of course forbids switching production to a wonder.

This brings up the subject of roads and railroads. It looks bad with roads and railroads everywhere, and people have been saying that since Civilization I came out. I suggest that, similar to my ferry line idea, the player must connect his cities with roads or railroads instead of building them tile by tile. These kinds of roads don't offer added commerce, only faster unit movement. As a new bonus perhaps, units travelling on these roads may heal automatically without having to fortify, which inforces the point that these connector roads are military transportation routes and have pre-built shelters and outposts where the units can recouperate and recieve reinforcements over the hundreds of nights that go by during turns.

Commercial roads and railroads can instead be built from the city screen interface, with all the benefits of regular roads as they were in Civilization 3. Similar to rivers, roads built on two adjacent tiles can join in the middle, with perhaps very small buildings on their sides to make it a bit more clear that there is a road on that tile.

I suggest that either movement on military roads costs less, or movement on commercial roads costs more, because the former is expensive to built while the latter is free and worker-made. Commercial roads can then be made a little bleaker than military ones, and military roads might not hug the sides of a tile. Military and commercial roads can be built on the same tile to give the benefit of both types.

Another route to go is Highways, which can serve as public railroads and gets the bonuses normally attributed to railroads. Highways in the game also offer the opportunity to let Tanks drive where they're going instead of being able to take the railroad, but I heard in a Forum that this costs so much juice that it isn't done in real life. In either case, highways might be ideal for lying like rivers do; one driving direction on either side of the tile.

What if the player needs to build improvements outside his borders?
Every city that has access to the work pool can also lift a worker out from it, and steer the unit manually.



EXPANDING THE GAME



It needs to be said that for being a historical game, the years just fly by suring the early days. Only around 500 AD or so have I created something resembling a kingdom, but by 1500 I'm navigating Ironclads and laying railroads. I'm sure part of this is because of the strategy I'm using (expand, expand and expand some more). It makes me weak for a long time, but when I've finished expanding I can sit back and watch the empire grow to becoming a super-power.

I believe that Civilization should split the Ancient age into two: 'Stone & Bronze' and 'Iron'. It should also split Industrial into Industrial and Reneissance, and Modern into Modern and Future. There could also be room for something which I find very exciting - Alternative Techs.

What if the king of his days saw the greatness of Leonardo Da Vinci, and funded research in his helicopter? Or what if the Aztecs discovered a way to create hot-air ballons in the ancient age, and used them for spying? And what if Hindenburg never crashed, what advances could zeppelines have taken -- would we be travelling cheaply and comfortably with them instead of in cramped airplanes?

The wonderful world of Civilization lets us take charge of extinct cultures and change their destiny. Would it not be a good evolution of the concept to let players delve into the possibilities of what could have been, had they been in charge? My idea of the alternative techs are that players who have gotten too far ahead in the science race can choose to research these instead of normal techs. Sometimes I find myself holding back because I want the others to catch up, otherwise it wouldn't be any fun to play. So instead of just cutting back research, players can play around with strange new stuff.

As I said above, I would really like it if the game would stay in the ancient era longer. Ways to accomplish this is to add a primitive tech 'level' before the first ones. Stonecraft could be a precursor to The Wheel, and allow the civilization to build Axemen.

With this idea, the Warrior unit in Civilization would fight with clubs, while Axemen wielded the traditional stone-axe.

Pictogram can be added before Alphabet, and so on. Not every single tech needs to be pushed forward though, just enough to flesh out the very first time period.
* If the free starting techs are removed, there's a considerable number of turns to earn.

There are also large gaps of history that need to be filled. Frigates and Man-o-wars become obsolete very quickly, because the Ironclad can be discovered with Steam Power at the beginning of Industrial. And most players wants railroads as soon as they enter that age. The life of renaissance ships can be stretched by having a more powerful Privateer unit, then a beefed up frigate to overtake the Man-o-war, and then there could be an extra tech after Steam Power which made the Ironclad available.

As for land units, I sorely miss Dragoons which could find a place between Knights and Cavalry. I'd also like an offensive infantry unit wielding a crossbow, and another one carrying 17th-century pistols. A Longcannon unit replaces the ordinary cannon in the Renaissance period. The Renaissance age also sees the beginning of flight with hot-air ballons, which were invented in the 18th century if I'm not mistaken. They can be used for transporting one ground unit over land, and they never need to land at cities unless they want to. On the other hand it's a non-combat unit that's defenseless against units with ranged attack (archer, longbowman, crossbowman and all units with firearms). They can of course also be used for recon, and share the privateer ability of not carrying nationality markings, meaning no-one cares if it enters enemy territory.

There are a couple of offensive infantry units missing after Longbowman; not until Riflemen come along is there any more powerful infantry, and the player shouldn't use them for attacking in either case. Offensive infantry is very useful for players who use cannons and defenders on the battlefield and so only move the forces forward one step per turn. More infantry can also give realistic roles to cavalry - hunting down retreating units, intercepting advancing ones or making first strikes against a city.

About the Crossbowman unit; crossbows were the most powerful hand weapon during a short period before firearms. Actually some crossbows were as powerful as modern-day miniguns and could shoot a man standing behind a thick oak tree, but they were cumbersome. Those huge crossbows would make a nice bridge between catapults and cannons, though.



Making the fun last longer
The most entertaining part of Civilization for most players is exploration, I think. Lets expand on that.

To take an extreme example; the player finds himself stranded on a small continent by himself, with no other landmass in sight. He coasts away until late Middle Ages when he gets Navigation (or is it Magnetism? My wonders make me forget) and sails off to see the world. Shortly he finds the Aztecs and trades their world map and contact with two other civs. He makes contact with them, gets their world maps and contact with three other civs. So he gets those maps too. Well... that's what the world looks like, on one turn I know my little island and on the next I know more about the world than earthlings did before satelite photos.

I suggest a more aggressive fog on territory that isn't monitored. After ten turns, it gets darker. Ten more turns and the tiles start to blend with white spots appearing. On the 25th turn the land is completely white, while the 30th turn distorts the borders between water and land -- some areas more than others.

Another idea is to make it impossible to trade maps with other civilization until the discovery of Astronomy. Or perhaps, only allow trading of white-land maps until then.

Also, discovering can be made harder. What if ships lost one hit point each turn they end outside the civilization's cultural borders? This encourages developing the first landmass before striking out for more. I think it also evens the odds between continental civs and island civs; the latter has an easier time with wars since first contact is pushed forward

[cont.]

[MonsterMan]

What the future holds...



...is not for a Civilization player to know, sadly. I think that if you restrict yourself to technology that is based on what we know today, and is likely to happen, you can create a fun and engrossing time period. While Call to Power II was silly in some areas, they had guts to try new waters, and I admire them for that.

It's very unrealistic that humans will venture out of our solar system by 2050, unless an alien race finds us and brings new technology. NASA plans to undertake a manned mission to Mars around 2030! Not a colony, not on Io, not in another star system. Personally I think 2200 is a more realistic date than 2050. But.

Establishing a real colony on Mars before 2050 isn't farfetched, and can be a victory condition. But the game can continue until 2200 if the player rather wants to play with the Alpha Centauri victory, or if he chooses to continue playing after winning in any other way. I know I for one like to continue playing the game to take over the world, so for me and others it'd be great if interesting things continued to happen, not just Future Tech advances which is as brilliant as using ASCII art for Wonder Movies (sorry).

There isn't a shortage of units and improvements available today which I think deserves a spot in your game. I'll suggest a few of them, because it's very satisfying for my creative mind to do so. I won't overdo it because I know that if you guys at Firaxis post a message in the Forums asking for ideas, you'll get hundreds of suggestions better than mine But here goes:

ABC weaponry
We've got the A, but what about Bacteriological and Chemical weapons? Saddam Hussein used mustard gas very cruely and efficiently against the Kurds way back in the eighties (if I remember correctly), and the recent anthrax-in-the-mail wave have put the finger on Bacteriological weapons.
I would suggest that C-weapons are less despised than A-weapons, and B-weapons are more despised than A-weapons. C's can be targetted at military installations, while B targets the people and puts them through hell before mass murder is complete. B-weapons may come in two 'sizes', with the more expensive one being more deadly. Alongside these weapons are advances in healthcare (B) and civic protection (gas masks and the like, for C), so civilizations have the chance to combat these threats if they devote the time to research it.

The chemical weapon tech can be followed by the chemical defense tech. Chemical defense lets the civ build a small wonder; the wonder is a project to produce gas masks and safety overalls for the whole population, and the cost is determined by the number of cities. There is a maintenance cost for this wonder, which increases as the empire grows. But it's a *good* wonder to build since chemical weapons will be totally inefficient against that civilization.

Defense for bacteriological weapons can be built following a Cure for Disease tech, meaning that a way to cure any ailment has been discovered. That might be placed after a Nanotechnology advance.

This leads to a golden age for Anti-matter bombs, which have already been created, albeit at the molecular scale.




DOMESTIC LUXURIES



Domestic luxuries are luxuries that can't be traded. They do bring happiness to your civilization, but not as much as real luxuries. After a domestic luxury is discovered, the city which controls it must construct a special building to take advantage of it. If a foreign city with the luxury is conquered, it won't affect the happiness of the conquering civ. However it will affect the civilization that lost their luxury, so there's a strategic angle to it.

Some ideas for luxuries are Olive oil, used in cooking. Peat from swamps (an old favourite), to make houses warm and cozy. Ebony from forests gives nice furniture to the wealthy. Clay from grassland with river. Copper from mountains makes nice cookware.



CONTRACT MANUFACTURING



This feature lets one city create one or several units for another city on the same continent. When it's finished, the unit will travel to the city who ordered it and fortify themselves in it, while a quick pop-up or something to that effect alerts the player the transaction is complete. Now, everyone already does this, but they do it manually. When the player has forty or fifty cities to keep track of, it's very easy to forget what city needed the unit I just made. This fix will take care of that.

If ferry lines exist, units can be transacted between continents.




FERRY LINES



A ferry line is a new tile improvement. It's placed on the edges of two continents were the water separating them is narrow. Wise players will choose the shortest distance possible. Ferry lines are used to transport units, just like certain ships the player can build, but they have different advantages as well as drawbacks. The advantages are automation; the line is sailed by two transport ships, going in opposite directions, so the player can (distance permitting) load up one vessel while unloading the other.

The total cost for the player of having this system shouldn't be greater than doing it manually, because on the higher difficulty levels it's important not to make strategic errors, and if there is even a slight advantage to doing a ferry line manually, it might go unused.

What are the benefits to Civilization with this system?
I for one love to play on archipelago maps, and my current empire is spread over four continents where each 'nation' is about equal in power. Airports won't come for awhile since I'm in the middle of the dark ages, and until they do my massive Caravel fleet will continue to flock like birds around my ferry line junctions. It would take a lot of tedium away from me if I could get some structure and automation in these processes.

I think it would also give the feeling that my different nations are indeed connected to each other; especially if there were small animated ships sailing back and forth, maybe accompanied by the odd seagull.

After the ferry line is completed, it can be upgraded to use as many ships as the player desires, to avoid forcing the player to sail down extra ships if he feels the need to transport more units quickly. Naturally the maintenance cost goes up with every new ship.

The cost in gold to open up a ferry line is judged first by the distance between ports (the player is prompted to pay up when he places the second ferry port).
Another factor is what kind of waters the ships will cross. Will they have to sail outside the nation's borders? Then the captains will insist on defensive armaments, even more so after privateers start roaming the seas. Or will the ships sail on oceans, which means more expensive ships to survive those conditions?
The line is sailed by ships equally fast as those the player can currently build. It might be an idea to stress the advantage of the ships being able to sail the whole way to the other shore in one turn.
In the spirit of automation, the player can assign two additional ships to defend the line, which is represented by those ships sailing right beside the cargo ships (in effect, tagging them), because it's likely that players will want to do that whether it's automated or not. The benefits this gives is negated by the inability to detach the ships from duty, for instance pulling them away to do some other job. One could give the argument to the player that the ships on guard duty have been modified to suit their job so much, they are unable to do anything else. On the other hand the disadvantage shouldn't be so hard as to make guard duty a mistake.
Areas of the system which can be investigated is possible benefits to overall commerce of the empire. That aspect could be kept in mind if you need to make drawbacks of the benefits of ferry lines. Ferry lines could also play a part in tourism in later stages of the game.

ON A RELATED NOTE...

Continent-spanning tunnels and bridges isn't futuristic at all, and I think Civilization needs to incorporate this into the game. The most obvious example is the tunnel under the English channel, and the bridge between Sweden and Denmark. I suggest that such a structure can only span one (coast) tile and be very very expensive, as they are in reality. But at the same time, under the current rules, those structures would basically be useless after the civ can build airbases.



MAKING THE WORLD AN INTERESTING PLACE



Unfortunately as it is now, cutting down forests is the right thing to do on all tiles except for Tundra. On grassland I might lose both shields by doing so, but I gain one food. Now, if I build a mine on that tile and railroad over that, I'm back to two shields but I have an extra food which lets my city support an extra citizen to work another tile. So the final movement is from 1 food & 2 shields to 2 food and 2 or 3 shields. Tundra can't be irrigated (rightly so) and won't produce more than two shields with mine and railroad, so there and only there is forestation the better choice.

I suppose the shields from forests comes from selling timber, firewood, furniture etc? Now, what is really hindering the option to build a mine in the middle of a forest? Mines are miniscule in comparison to how much territory lies inside a tile. If it's possible to build mines on forest tiles, then cutting down forests becomes a bad idea unless the player really needs some farmland.

So with this idea, a forest tile generates 1 food and 3 shields if it has a mine on it. That is the maximum number of shields a player can get from mined grassland with a bonus shield and railroad, so from a production perspective it will be futile to cut down forests. However, forests shouldn't get an extra shield from railroad; they may get extra commerce though, because railroads make exploatation faster. With that idea, hills and mountains will stay superior for production purposes.

Also, I suggest a new "Light Forest" tile, which can be the result of artificially planting forest. Light forest only ever has one shield, whether it is built on bonus grassland or not, but on the other hand the tile can be irrigated for an extra food. In effect, grassland is terraformed into plains, at least as far as the bonuses go. On plains, the player might be able to plant shrubs, which yield as much as ordinary forests does in Civilization III.

Or perhaps one should discard my numbers and inflate all tile bonuses to make room for more diversity in terrain. My point is to make it strategically sound for the player not to level all vegetation to the ground, because forests and jungles liven up the landscape more than a hundred tiles of irrigated plains (urgh). I dislike it so much I order my spare workers to tiles outside my city radius' to plant forests.

Another approach instead of tinkering with the tile bonuses is to have new terrain improvements. This would go particularly well together with my ideas below ("Worder Reworked"). First off I'd like to mention "Timber Yard", which is what gets built if the player decided to 'mine' a forest tile. "Windmills" can be built to generate extra food, just as "Watermills" can be built to increase production. There can be a rule that a maximum of two mills of each type can be built in a single city. Windmills and watermills become obsolete as the civilization enters the industrial age, and at that point the graphics of the improvement becomes more subtle, but stays on the map to liven it up. It won't be possible to build new mills after the Industrial age has begun, so the mills that are there becomes a nice historical touch in the players "old world".

Beaches can be built on coast tiles that border a city, which means most seaside cities won't be able to have more than two of them. Beaches contribute one extra commerce (from tourism) and has some neat graphics. In the modern age they contribute two commerce, are called Resorts and maybe have umbrellas and beach balls on them. If the tile the beaches are located on produces extra-ordinary commerce, Resorts features a little hotel icon, but it only produces one commerce due to crime, maybe.

Ports can be built on any coast tile within the empire, and they can completely heal a naval unit in one turn. Ports steal this ability from Harbors, but the player can still build a port as a city improvement, which has the same function as the tile improvement.

"Armed fortifications" are an improvement over normal fortifications; if built on an existing fortification the old one is lost, but work is completed a bit faster. These forts have defensive armament suitable for their time (catapult, ballista, cannon etc) with the twist that the defense is built into the improvement itself. However, the player needs to man these forts with units for the catapults to work; as long as at least one combat unit is on that tile, the fort will defend like a real catapult was fortified in it.
* There is a danger for the player built into this improvement. If the enemy conquers the fort, they will begin bombarding the player's tile improvements. On the other hand, the player doesn't need to pay upkeep for the catapult-simulating effect, since the equipment is manned by whoever is inside the fort.
* The player needs to upgrade forts like he upgrades units as new forms of artillery becomes available. He doesn't *have* to, of course. Those upgrades are made by money, not workers.

"Traps" can only be built in no-mans-land, which is often created when a border city is raized and the other civilization's cultural borders withdraw. The public outcry over their leader setting up traps within his own borders is great enough for that option to be witheld from the player (think land mines in Central Park).
* The traps will release when an enemy unit moves onto that square. The player's troops will always know there are traps in the area, and they can move safely on those squares. Therefore traps must signal what civilization built them.
* The type of traps that can be built change with time. Pits in the ancient era, ignitable oil in the middle ages, hidden explosives in Industrial, grenades-on-tripwire in early modern and landmines in late modern. The damage they inflict can vary depending on the terrain. Explosives on mountains carry the chance of setting off an avalanche which could double the damage, while burning oil isn't very effective on wet terrain.

"Trenches" are quick-n-dirty alternatives to fortifications. They give 25% extra defense and are always completed in one turn, but they make movement slower. Trenches can't be built on mountains, tundra, swamp or glacier tiles for obvious reasons. The idea is that trenches are built on the fly during war -- so they can also be built by combat units. Perhaps a group of damaged units are recouperating in no-mans-land and need to be left alone for a while; then one of them can dig out a trench. I think it would be neat with that World War I feeling.

A new kind of fortification can be built on coastlines, which hinders units from landing there. The time it takes to build it depends, among other things, on how many sides of the tile that border the coast. Or, the player can use a similar system to my Village idea below, and use the arrow keys to decide which side gets fortified. If more workers join in, they will automatically start work on the same side. Even if only one side is fortified, it can sometimes delay enemy ships and alert the player.
* Ships with bombardment capabilities can destroy these forts.

Well, those were some of my ideas, I'm sure there are dozens more from other players :-)



ARMIES



Frankly, armies suck. There is only one benefit - it lets slowmoving units withdraw if they're losing. Weigh that against sacrificing a wonder-producing Leader and the fact that units can't be unloaded (let's say one unit needs to protect a worker, another needs to defend the city while the third one makes a first strike - no can do), nor can they be upgraded to more modern units. With all these factors, it's not saying too much that armies suck and it's a mistake to build them.

Let's change that.

Armies should be free to create, by stacking two or more units and right-clicking on them, choosing the "Form Army" command. That brings up a small menu with icons of the units that are stacked on that particular tile. Check the empty squares, click ok and presto - you've got yourself an army! These armies only ever have one advantage - they make it very easy to move several units at once.

Right-click on an army, choose "Dismantle Army" and you get the same window where the player can uncheck the unit(s) that should break away from formation. These can now be controlled as individual units, permitting they have any movement points left.
* Upgrading units in an army can be very user-friendly. Move the army to a city with baracks and hit the upgrade button; the army will be ready to march on the next turn, with the applicable upgraded units.

There can still be great leaders in the game, of course. I suggest that the Leader ability is either to double the shield production in a city until it's current project (~wonder), because they are *great leaders* that can inspire the labourers -- but they are not miracle workers.

Leaders could also be used in armies, so that when a leader takes command of an army - which he can do at any time - the army gets certain benefits. The retreat-if-dying ability is a very good one, but if the player is supposed to commit a wonder-helping leader, there needs to be something more to the army. Perhaps the army can attack twice in one turn? Mind you, the units within the army is still not more powerful than ordinary ones.

The AI should build and form armies at all times, especially if this helps speed up the game. It might be a particularly good idea for it to use armies in cities, which could cut the total number of units in the game by half.

CHOOSING THE SIZE

One idea is that cities with barracks gets the choice to produce units in three different sizes, with the larger size having more men and the smaller size having fewer. This option would suit situations where you need a defensive unit quickly but don't have the money to rush, and other situations where the city has extra time on its hands while waiting for the next improvement to become available.

Large units may also have the technical side-effect of speeding up the game, since the AI can settle for, say, two big ones instead of three medium ones.

As for what changes to the unit its size creates, I'm not too sure, but either large units gets an extra defense point or an extra hit point. So, in the latter case we would have a veteran pikemen with 5 hp that doesn't gain another one when it becomes elite, but still retains the chance to score a Leader.

I don't think there should be any drawbacks on the small units apart from their missing hit point, since they are quite puny indeed. So in that situation small units are like drafted citizens except you still have to build them.

I suggest that if you decide to consider this idea, that a little row of squares be put after the name of the unit in the drop-down list, and the player can then click these before selecting which unit to produce. He can also set a default choice for all units in his preferences.

[cont.]

[MonsterMan]

VILLAGES REPLACES COLONIES?



After thrashing your Army concept, I feel bad about doing the same to Colonies. But the truth is, it is unwise to build colonies. The danger is always there that the enemy will build a city nearby and swallow the colony; not to mention that the player must invest defensive units and devote workers to building a road to it. When you add up, using a settler to build a city is almost always the better choice, and you don't have to worry about enemy cultural borders as long as that city stays ahead in the cultural race.

I have only ever built one colony, when I conquered the Russian capital in 3000 BC and later found an iron deposit three squares away in a mountain range bordering the sea. I couldn't build a city there because of the mountains and proximity to Moscow, and instead of waiting for Moscow's culture to build up I founded a colony on it. But this is the only time I had to do that, after one month of solid play.

If workers could build Villages instead, the concept would become viable. Villages can have a 'city square' of four tiles, but on the plus side they can be built on any tile. Villages can be supported by food caravans -- I really miss food distribution in Civilization III by the way, it is both historically accurate and intricate; Rome had vast food-production in north africa which let that empire hand out bread to all hungry romans.
* So, a village built on four mountain tiles can only work the square it is placed on; while it won't grow, it won't starve, but unless it sits right on the resource it can't distribute it.
* The civilization who built the village must still connect it with roads, and defend it with units.
* Villages can be built to take advantage of any resource, for instance gold. They will rarelybe a viable alternative to cities, though.
* When the player hits the B button while controlling a worker (and the worker is within range), a four-tile square appears around him. By hitting the arrow keys, he can control what exact tiles should fall into the village's reach. This is not affected by closeness to cultural borders.
* Villages don't grow the same way cities do. They need workers to join with them until they reach size 4. When size 4 is reached, the player can choose to build a settler and have it join the city. This will change the village into a normal, size-6 city.
* If the village is built on Mountains (or Glacier), it can't grow beyond size 6. Under the current rules this gives a mountain city the defense bonus of a Metropolis, which is acceptable I think. If that village-city can support itself with food by working tiles, any food import will cease automatically.
* Villages built on any other tile grows as any other city would, once construction on the aqueduct is completed.

With this system, which could maybe benefit from tweaking, the player can use the alternative to cities but there is still an opening for it to develop, which takes away the benefit of sending a settler. He can also build these settlements in places that would otherwise leave gaps on his continent, which is good because as it is now a lot of resources (~gold in mountains) go unused, and that's not logical.



HUNGER STRIKES?



It's very odd that resisting citizens will be so phobic to the player that they would rather starve themselves to death (by becoming all entertainers, which is often the default event when one clicks the city square) than working tiles. So, these Persians hate me so much, they are running around with balls and whistles chanting my name while helping me weed out unreliable natives through suicide? Very odd resistance. Rather, they should refuse to be any kind of specialist and work all tiles - with the quirk that the resisters will only produce food. I don't think the city should grow while there is resistance, either. An added effect might be that all viable terrain produces at least two food, except mountains (and glaciers), because the worker on that tile gets free time from lack of producing shields or commerce; they are instead doing everything to stay alive until their rightful ruler frees them.

When the resistance is over, the food box is emptied. Lets say there is a mandatory huge feast to win the last stubborn people over, and generally celebrate the new era of peace and tranquility for the town. This negates the otherwise too wonderful thing of a full food box.

Another idea is to have a "Free resisters" option after conquering a city. If the player is running a totalitarian government (Despotism/Monarchy/Communism), the unruly people are set free, only to transform into a kind of guerillamen (which exact unit they become depends on where in the timeline it happens). These guerillamen start attacking the town on the next turn.

Rulers of a free governemnt instead releases the civilians, which find a new home in their own empire. This is done invisibly to the civ who releases them, while the opposing civ gets a popup window asking where the population points should be allocated (assuming that civ is the player's).



MULTI-PURPOSE RESOURCES



Lets take Ivory as an example. What if, instead of Ivory, there were elephants? Elephants would only exist on tropical to subtropical plains (savannah) and jungles. The player can then decide if he wants to use the elephants for trade (ivory), for food or for producing a new kind of elephant riders.

For the latter, I suggest that the indian special unit be an upgrade of that, and perhaps they don't need the elephant resource; indians have tamed elephants from the start of the game, and they're already a part of their society.

Using multi-purpose resources might help streamline the number of different resources, and make room for entirely new ones. Some simple options with one of the advisors can control how a resource is used.



LESS IMPORTANT IDEAS





SEMICIVS

Not quite real civilizations, not quite barbarian forts. Semicivs build towns and connect them with roads, and train half-decent defenders for their towns. However they will never expand beyond three cities, they don't build city improvements and they don't wage war against other civilizations. They do attack barbarians, should they wander into their land.

Semicivs are intended to make it harder for a player to rapidly expand in the early days, especially on gargantuan maps where even sixteen civilizations have ample space to grow. Currently it is very wise to expand as much as possible, but it's not very fun. Taking my own games as example, my empire will be quite weak until about 1000 AD which is where my expansion campaign usually halts. Then it begins to really grow, and I usually end up the most powerful civilization, even at Monarch level.

At the same time, semicivs are implied to require very little computer resources, and could be placed intentionally by the game at places where one civ is likely to get too much space, naturally taking special consideration of the player civ. The player is in charge of deciding how many semicivs are placed in the game. There may be an upper limit, decided by how large the map will be.

Civilizations can, and probably should, conquer semicivs. These little kingdoms aren't entitled to the same considerations given to other civs, which is a fancy way of saying that the rest of the world doesn't care what you do with them.

When a semiciv city is conquered it vanishes, and the player is presented with the (mandatory) option of choosing one of his cities as home for those particular people. The population of that city may increase by half the size of the conquered city, ie a semiciv city size 4 would grow the chosen city by 2. There is a potential hole in this idea - city growth limits. That's why I didn't suggest that the new citizens were automatically relocated to the nearest city. One idea is that these primitive people are used to living rough, and will boost the nearest city regardless of any limits. However, a size 7 city without an aqueduct will of course not grow any further as a result of the new people.

As for the faces on the city screen showing these new people, you might want to create a new face from each of the cultural groups and use that to represent semiciv citizens. These citizens don't adhere to the unhappiness/revolt rules concerning citizens from foreign, real civilizations.

Conquered semiciv cities should produce this result to signal that they are more important than just barbarian forts. At the same time they are significantly harder to defeat, no lonesome archer is going to capture one of their cities.

THE GREAT HOLY MOUND

What is the great holy mound, you might ask? It's the pyramid that was never made. By creating a back-up for every wonder, which gives no effect but keeps half (but no less than two) the culture points the real wonder generates, one can skip the ability to switch the shields over to another wonder, which is kindof bizarre. But it would still make it worthwhile to keep working on the backup wonder, while another city started working on the next wonder.

Btw, one of my strategies is to always have a city building the palace. It gives me a real head start when I can finally build that wonder... ;-) That kind of cheating should be removed from the game. I really liked the rules from Civ II in this aspect. They were hard, but they were logical. Now it's "stop working on that marketplace, now you're a cannon dammit!"

THE HIPPODROME

Or as I like to call it, "the secular cathedral building" that follows Colloseum. The hippodrome is horse-track racing with chariots invented by the romans and much larger than a Colloseum. A hippodrome is costly to build and gives off three happy faces. It loses one happy face somewhere in the modern era when television comes along and brings sport shows from the Colloseum.

The neat thing about the Hippodrome is that it requires horses to build, which means horses will stay a strategic resource after Cavalry has been outdated by the Armor.

One idea is that if a city builds both a Colloseum and Hippodrome, the former won't provide happy faces since the gladiators moved to the Hippodrome. Neither will it cost any maintenance, and it'll still give off cultural points like normal.

A NEW KIND OF COLOSSEUM

I propose that Colosseums be built as placeholders, thus they will be quite cheap to build (20 shields, like two walls, perhaps), and they won't cost any maintenance either. The player can now construct three additions to the Colosseum -
the amphitheater, which generates culture.
the Lion Pit, which gives a happy face but requires access to Lions. Lions can be a strategic resource found on savannah, which I translate to tropical plains.
the Gladtiator Games gives a second happy face, but it requires a totalitarian government. If the Colosseum improvement loses a happy face from modern times, I suppose this would be it. The Lion Pit doesn't expire in that sense (spanish bullfighting comes to mind as a comparison).

THE NEW MAP SYSTEM

I propose a globe. I was surprised not to see this in Civilization III. The default minimap used during play could look like old world maps, cut like: )()(
It might be hard to make out from simple ASCII, but what I mean is the shape of an orange peel that has had four cuts at the top and four at the bottom; to make the peel flat, there are holes between the circular edges... well I'm almost confusing myself, but I bet you know what I'm referring to.

At the click of a button, the orange peel map is replaced by a 3D-globe. In this map mode, the globe can be spun by for example holding down CTRL and hitting the arrow keys. The numeric
keypad would be superior, but I fear a lot of people would occasionally forget the CTRL and move a unit accidentally.

Clicking the globe (or peel) itself brings up a large, strategic map.

This will finally allow for realistic worlds where the poles aren't inaccessible. It will bring back Glaciers as a terrain, and I have some further ideas on that in my Atlantis idea below.

AN ATLANTIS SITUATION

I've noticed that here and there, there are specks of coast some distance from actual land. It's a very nice touch, I hope to see sunken mountain ranges too in the next game, not to mention sunken ship wrecks from old battles. Now, if these specks are found in a cold climate, close to the poles, it would make sense that the coast tiles become glacier tiles. Glacier tiles are suitable for building cities; while glacier tiles probably won't produce neither food, shields nor commerce, a bustling town can grow out of fishing.

This will allow for a very neat thing: if a nuke goes off, all glacier tiles in the blast radius will *melt*. And if there happens to be a city in the blast radius... There's room for some really cool graphic effects here, with the town sinking and the odd citizens swimming around for awhile. Naturally all units on glacier tiles will drown following the impact.

UNIT DIVERSITY

One of my dislikes are how long antiquated units linger. This is because seemingly all units past spearman and longbowman require a resource or another. How about a sniper unit? There aren't many men in such a unit, so the equipment can easily fit into an imaginary cargo ship. What they lack in manpower they make up for with their specially made rifles. The sniper can be made available at the same time as the rifleman, and can only be built by cities that can't build riflemen. Snipers can be made equally good at offence and defense so with the retired longbowman, you can kill two birds with one stone.

A unit that doesn't linger is the Chariot. I've played ten games or so, and only once have I been able to build it. By the time I've found horses and connected them, Horsemen have been available. You might want to move the whole horse-related tech tree forward a step in the Ancient age.

MORE ON TERRAIN

I think it would be neat if the player was allowed to spacify names for rivers & mountain ranges in his game world. At the same time, it would be just as neat to have concentrations of mountains and hills shaped in the form of a range. There could also be a feature that let the player colorize a strategic map (mentioned elsewhere), and specify a name for that 'coloration'. This I think is an easy way for you guys to allow names for deserts, bays, oceans, forests etc.

I think this idea will make it easier for players of Civilization to fall in love with their world, and it also lets you personalize text that is presented to the players. Lets say the player conquers a city in the middle of a desert, which he has named Saharah. The standard message could check if both the conquering unit and city is within a named territory, and if both tiles are of the same type (desert in this case); and say--
"Sire, our desert campaign in Saharah has progressed with the capture of X".
Just an example of course.

CLAIMED TERRITORY

Continuing with your great idea of expanding borders, I suggest a feature which allows civilizationsto make agreements with other powers regarding what they consider to be their territory, which goes beyond what their factual borders say. If the player brings up this option, he is presented with a large strategic map. I suggest it use twice the zoom that was used in the far-off view of Civ3. However you won't need to optimize any graphics, because single colors denote the terrain, with white being cities (for the player's reference). This is similar to one of the highest zooms in Civilization II, if memory serves me right.

The player can then 'colorize' on this map, the territory outside his nation's borders which he wants to claim as his own. Then he clicks OK, and the power on the other side of the bartering table gets to claim the territory they consider to be their own. If all goes well, neither power will be able to build cities on the other powers' territory. Special weight should be placed on territory on the same continent as the powers' capital is located.

I keep thinking of Alaska. If the real world was crammed into Civilization rules, there would be a couple of Russian and Canadian settlements hugging the coast :-) That's plain silly, because everyone knows Alaska belongs to the US, whether they choose to populate the whole area or not.

Under a mutual protection pact, a power is obligated to declare war if a third power settles a pacified area of the other power. This makes it necessary for all powers to know that an area is taken. If a power thinks it has something to gain by it, they will start up negotiations before settling on a continent which is home to another powers' capital. If they have already settled their whole continent, they probably won't have anything to gain by it. Otherwise, it's up to the player to make contact and settle these matters.

A nifty idea is that after the UN has been built, all the claimed territory in the world is brought into discussion, and it's up to each power to vote on whether any coherent territory should be respected by all powers. If such a proposal goes through, it will be respected until a power goes to war with that civ, in which case the slate is wiped clean even after peace. Umm... I have a feeling this idea has gone very deep, what do you think of it? Could be worth to tinker with, perhaps?

[The End]

[Libertarian]

Wow. That's an awful lot of work. I guess my question at this point is, what do you hope to accomplish by it? Are you a programmer?

[MonsterMan]

My ideas started out as suggestions for a possible Civilization IV, but then I thought, "Firaxis might release add-ons, and some ideas are simple enough to be in a patch, so I'll just say Civilization instead of Civilization IV".

I do understand that my ideas aren't simple tweaks done in an afternoon =)

[Lord_Davinator]

Firaxis better put a good many more things in its next patch... the first one hardly made any difference whatsoever.
I'm playing empire earth right now... and getting my assed kicked... I'd play civ if it were up to speck... but firaxis flaunting a stale name didn't do its part of the bargin... and the bloody limited edition I payed 65 bucks for was plain highway robbery.

[Oerdin]

Dang! You're fingers must hurt after typing that much. :-)

[MonsterMan]

...has given me time to type down my ideas during the past week :-)

[MonsterMan]

...top the thread, I hope.

[Libertarian]

Actually, there's already a long list of improvement suggestions at the top. I'm afraid you'll have to take a number.

[MonsterMan]

Yes, I've also heard about The List with an incredible amount of ideas for improvements. It's just that I came up with some rather good and original ideas (I hope), and that they're at least worth reading :)

[Blackadar1]

Personally I'm around 1500 AD and it takes a full fifteen minutes to start a new turn.

I'm not doubting you, but I wonder what is causing this as it takes no time at all on my PIII-800 with 256MB RAM to end a turn. My PC isn't top of the line anymore, so something other than pure hardware processing power must be causing this. I wonder if it's graphical or RAM based or an incompatibility with another program (like a virus scanner or a chat program or a particular version of Windows).

[MonsterMan]

I think it is the difference between my P-II 333Mhz and your P-III 800Mhz that causes our turns to differ so much in length. But I'm not complaining about the length, because I chose to play on a gargantuan map with eleven opponents despite my pc being close to the minimum requirement to even run the game. With a pc from 1997, it's amazing I can play the game at all I think, kudos to the programmers :-)
But the end of turns can be handled more efficiently for slow computers, and I think even those with fast pc's experience *some* delay between city reports.

I'm running Windows XP.

[Uncle Thade]

Great list, hopefully some of your ideas could be implemented. Lots o work tho'.

"Hey Fred are you going to fix that, I really want to go for a bronto burger" Barney siad "Hyuck, Hycuk"

[C0ckney]

Great ideas, good luck with getting any kind of responce to them from Firaxis...

[MonsterMan]

Thanks for wishing me luck, Cockney :o)
We'll see what happens.

[Libertarian]

We're just teasing you. Firaxis' responsiveness to customer concerns is legendary. You'll likely hear from them before the end of the day.

[MonsterMan]

Yeah, really :o)
No, I know how game companies work, more or less. But I've spotted the really big guys, Magaha and Morris, making posts in this forum, and that does raise my hopes that they will open my thread and read enough to make them interested in reviewing what I suggested.
A man can dream =)

[GePap]

Monsterman:
As someone said to me when I put forward a few ideas, why don't you look into all the groups trying to design new games of their own based around the civ concept or civ graphics? The main one I am thinking of is Clash of Civilizations, which has a forum on this site.

[MonsterMan]

I thought Clash was dead, actually. The latest development I've seen on their site was from October 26th. Maybe they started playing Civ3, now that I think of it ;-) But their forum seems active. I'll certainly check it out, thanks!

[The Eliminator]

Awesome ideas, much more "fun" than those in the other threads.

Try to start sending stuff to Infogrames instead of Firaxis - with any luck, Firaxis won't be on board for Civ4.

[MonsterMan]

If I had the choice of what game to see my ideas in, I think I would choose Clash of Civilizations :-) It has a steep learning curve, but I think I'm getting my head around it.

[copcartman]

Some nice ideas, I particulary like the idea of making the world more "alive" with names on rivers etc. Some of the suggestions seem a little arbitrary though, like nuking polar-ice, and having a unit with only snipers.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by MonsterMan
I thought Clash was dead, actually. The latest development I've seen on their site was from October 26th. Maybe they started playing Civ3, now that I think of it ;-) But their forum seems active. I'll certainly check it out, thanks!

[Monty Python voice] We're not dead Yet! [/Monty Python voice]

Actually, our webmaster went on vacation for a bit. Then the server change prevented us from doing a decent upgrade. (We can send files to Markos for him to put up by hand, but if we screw something up the site would be a Real mess, so we haven't updated.

The mirror page at http://cullivan.com/coc/frame/index.shtml is more up to date, and you should go there for the time being.

Cya,

Mark

PS Thanks for the plug GePap

[MonsterMan]

copcartman: Thanks :) I'm not versed in military units at all, but the sniper could serve as a hands-on example of what I meant. It would probably not make a good unit.

Thanks for the link Mark, I'll check it out :)

[Velociryx]

Wow! I'm bookmarking this thread so I can come back to it for an extended visit when my eyes are not quite so blurry....for the moment, I wanted to comment here to: a) Bump this thread!, and b) Say that I *truly* appreciate all the creative energy that went into creating it!

Oh...we're a LONG way from turning our little project into anything that even BEGINS to approach the level of complexity here, but I liked what I read, and will be returning here to read more....we could use a guy like you on our project....

-=Vel=-
(Leader of the Courts of Candle'Bre Design Team!)

[MonsterMan]

Thankyou for your kind words, Velociryx
I'd be honored to help in any way that I can, I'm very excited about the Clash project. The terrain graphics look a bit rough, but I would think that's the easiest part to tweak later. There's still a lot about that game I don't understand though... how are units built? How does terrain improvements get built?

[Mark_Everson]

Hey MonsterMan:

Units in Clash are built from the three basic goods in the econ system Mfg. Goods, Services, and Food. (Specialty goods like iron just give bonuses to the basic goods depending on the local economy.) There is an orders system to allow civ-wide orders to build units. You can also drill down and order on the province level, or even an individual map square. Units are built in elements (e.g. Legion, Light Horse). So even units can have combined-arms capabilities.

Terrain improvements are largely automatically done by the local economy without need for spoon feeding from the player . The player can influence those decisions by either giving orders that suplement what the local people are doing, or giving incentives like tax breaks. Roads are now done through a central depot, somewhat like PW. It will get more versatile as the coding moves forward. Much of the terrain improvement stuff is still not demo6, but you can see the roads there.

[MonsterMan]

Thanks for clearing that up, Mark :-) I didn't see an article dealing with it on the Clash page. I think I'll download the demo, I'm sure most of my confusion will disappear then.