Let's help Firaxis with "mega-bank" and other ideas

[Ijuin]

I like some of the ideas here. Here are my suggestions:

New Specialists:

Manufacturer: produces 1 shield, increase this to 2 shields with Factory, 3 shields with Manufacturing Plant. If this seems too strong, then have them produce 1 pollution each as well.

Poet: produces 1 culture per turn. This offers a means of producing the critical 10 culture points needed for your city radius to increase to the full 21 squares without waiting sixty turns for a Temple to be built in your high-corruption cities (you only wait ten turns, but you forfeit the food you might have gotten by working the land instead).

Constable: Reduces Corruption/Waste in the city by an amount equal to a Courthouse. Provides NO resistance to foreign propaganda and does not help against Resisting foreign citizens in captured cities.

Units:

Have some sort of foot soldier with an attack of 6-8 available in the early Industrial Age (give it a defence of 3-4 so it will not replace Riflemen as a defense unit as well). This unit would require Saltpeter, and cost 80 shields or so. Call it the Grenadier or something. I ask for this because until Replacable Parts there is no unit other than Calvary with an attack higher than 4.

Improvements:

Stock Exchange: Cost 200 shields, +50% tax income, available with The Corporation, upkeep 2 (Commerce improvement, so it is free upkeep with Smith's Trading Company)

Theatre: Avaiable with Free Artistry, cost 200 shields, make 2 citizens content, 2 culture, upkeep 2

Mill: Available with Engineering, cost 120 shields, +50% production, upkeep 3, requires a river in the city radius.

Bunker: cost 120 shields (half price for Militaristic civs), upkeep 1, available with Synthetic Fibers. Prevents citizens from being killed by Artillery, Bomber, or Nuclear bombardment (but does not protect units).

[Gen.Dragolen]

If Jeff or any of the other developers are interested, the one thing missing from the game is the effects of weather. Adding specialized workers or a long list of other minor improvments would just clutter up the game play, IMO.

Most of history's biggest upheavals have been because of climatic changes that force people to move or starve.

The fall of the Roman Empire in the West was initiated by several years of cold dry weather on the steppe in what is now the Ukraine and Poland. The Goths and Vandals were looking for greener pastures and the poor harvests had left the Romans short of cash after purchasing grain and food stuffs to keep the people fed. Didn't leave a lot for keeping the Legions up to strength...

If they can use terrain changes for pollution and global warming, it should be easy to add a section that will make wholesale changes to a continent's land types. Forest won't disappear, but maybe shrink if there are several squares together and jungles can go to deserts. Look at the impacts that El Nino y La Nina have on our climates. The only mitigating circumstance for us is a good food distribution system so areas where the food supply fails can be saved from starvation.

This also leads to another tool of political pressure in the game: no longer "Can you spare some gold ?" to "What can we trade you for some food ?" Since the game scores are partly based on Population size, a famine would be a terrible blow.

And let's not forget that the earth is always techtonically active and a volacanos like Krakatoa can produce global effects when they blow. Imagine having your irrigated land that was supporting a 22 size city could only support a 16 size city. If you don't have railways yet, you're looking at mass starvation, low morale, and possible revolutions. Time to build settlers and move on down the road/across the ocean/over that mountain range...

That would make for some "interesting" management problems. For both players and for the programmers.

[Shadowstrife911]

They should make the UN play a bigger role in the game besides the victory.

Like someone said before, votes about Slavery and such should be added at regular intervals. Failure to abide by the rules laid down by the UN would lower your reputation and other civilizations might launch operations vs you (UN Forces)



Let us edit railroads as well, i hate infinite movement !

Farmlands would be cool, but i don't really find that I need so much food in the late game.

Another cool idea would be to add the ability to place Offshore Oil Platforms to harvest Oil. (I dont think they have this but thye have the Platform, right ??)

[Jethro83]

Originally posted by wrylachlan
These are great ideas, and I have one more to add to this - "Manufacturers", a specialist that is worth 1 shield, and then, for symmetry reasons, change the manufacturing plant from a flat 50% increase to doubling the value of the "Manufacturer" specialists.

Another good idea.

I disagree with this one. As bountiful as the sea is, we are still much more efficient at utilizing the land, so I think adding this much of a sea bonus would be too much.

Even when improved that much, a coastal/sea square can only produce at maximum 3 food (more in the case of fish and whales) and 2 shields (more with whales). With farmlands and the larger-scale mine I propose, we'll still be more efficient at utilizing the land.

This I have to disagree with. I think that rr sprawl is already a problem, and adding more of a commerce bonus will only make it worse. I would like to see some mechanism that makes it advantageous for the player to only build rr's between cities, not all over the place. And with this you could add a RR Depot improvement that adds commerce if you have rr's between your cities, but not a per tile bonus, and no superhighways (unless it is a Superhighway city improvement that doesn't clutter up the map).

I don't really mind the RR sprawl. I simply consider it a diverse railroad system transporting goods around the countryside. You can't forget that people don't just live in cities. The rural areas with the farming and mining do need somewhat of a transit system out there. Anyway, I think that cities with railroads only going between cities, and the rest of the squares as road would look ugly.

And as for my superhighway idea, I actually had the improvement in mind (just like in Civ II).

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by LordAzreal
I don't really mind the RR sprawl. I simply consider it a diverse railroad system transporting goods around the countryside. You can't forget that people don't just live in cities. The rural areas with the farming and mining do need somewhat of a transit system out there. Anyway, I think that cities with railroads only going between cities, and the rest of the squares as road would look ugly.

My issue is not an asthetic one. My problem with RR sprawl, and simple road sprawl is that it takes away from the military significance of roads and RR. If they are everywhere, bombing out one doesn't do a whole lot, and no single one is worth defending. If you only had roads and rr directly between cities, not everywhere, they would be very strategically important, something worth defending. It would make combat much more interesting. And yes I understand that the countryside needs a road system, but I would like to assume that everything inside your borders has a simple road system and that the actual road tiles and rr tiles represent major highways and rail lines, the ones worth defending in a war.

[zulu9812]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Ijuin
I like some of the ideas here. Here are my suggestions:

Poet: produces 1 culture per turn. This offers a means of producing the critical 10 culture points needed for your city radius to increase to the full 21 squares without waiting sixty turns for a Temple to be built in your high-corruption cities (you only wait ten turns, but you forfeit the food you might have gotten by working the land instead).
[QUOTE]

Far too powerful Regardless of your good intentions, people'll just use it for cultural border expansion, and it's far cheaper and easier to use your poets than by actually paying for it via temples, cathedrals, etc. A lot of people already hate culture flipping as it is, so they're gonna loath this idea.


About the bunkers; quite a good idea, but perhaps not as useful as it may seem. First of all, bombards tend to target military units first, rather than population. Secondly, at this tech level everyone's gonna be precision bombing anyway, making it even less useful. Since this is more reminiscent of a WW2 air-raid shelter, perhaps make it available with Flight?

[kring]

Originally posted by panag


hi ,

its back , ......... , .....unlimited , .......

have a nice day

panag, when you say it's back: are you saying it is back in the 1.21f patch?

I know in the 1.16 patch, you could IFE, but you wouldn't get the shields after the first time.

[Jethro83]

Originally posted by wrylachlan


My issue is not an asthetic one. My problem with RR sprawl, and simple road sprawl is that it takes away from the military significance of roads and RR. If they are everywhere, bombing out one doesn't do a whole lot, and no single one is worth defending. If you only had roads and rr directly between cities, not everywhere, they would be very strategically important, something worth defending. It would make combat much more interesting. And yes I understand that the countryside needs a road system, but I would like to assume that everything inside your borders has a simple road system and that the actual road tiles and rr tiles represent major highways and rail lines, the ones worth defending in a war.

Oh yeah. Good point.

Maybe they should implement two types of road/railroad. One that forms main roads/railroads for military purposes, and another for domestic roads/railroads, that can only be used by workers, and automatically appear when a citizen in the city works the square, disappearing when the citizen stops working there.

Determining whether it is a road or railroad in the domestic square could be done by determining whether or not Steam Power has been discovered by the civ, and by the availability of iron and coal.

So that the sprawl of major roads doesn't become a problem, make it so that it takes a little longer to build them, and even throw in a bit of a gold cost (cheaper in grasslands, plains, floodplains, desert and tundra. More expensive in forests and hills, most expensive in jungles and mountains).

To distinguish between domestic, and military road/railroad systems, you could simply make the military roads/railroads fatter, and then in the squares worked by citizens, there should be a few houses as well as the thin, domestic transit system.

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by LordAzreal


Oh yeah. Good point.

Maybe they should implement two types of road/railroad. One that forms main roads/railroads for military purposes, and another for domestic roads/railroads, that can only be used by workers, and automatically appear when a citizen in the city works the square, disappearing when the citizen stops working there.

Determining whether it is a road or railroad in the domestic square could be done by determining whether or not Steam Power has been discovered by the civ, and by the availability of iron and coal.

So that the sprawl of major roads doesn't become a problem, make it so that it takes a little longer to build them, and even throw in a bit of a gold cost (cheaper in grasslands, plains, floodplains, desert and tundra. More expensive in forests and hills, most expensive in jungles and mountains).

To distinguish between domestic, and military road/railroad systems, you could simply make the military roads/railroads fatter, and then in the squares worked by citizens, there should be a few houses as well as the thin, domestic transit system.

I talked about this a great deal in this thread:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...5&pagenumber=1

A brief summary:

To combat RR and Road Sprawl remove the per tile commerce bonus and replace it with an overall commerce bonus for each of the closest 4 cities you have a direct connection to. (The number 4 was chosen to discourage people from ICSing to rack up a huge bonus). Since workers will be making less roads and RR's, increase the build time. And to keep players from sprawling out the roads if they have idle workers in the endgame, give roads a small upkeep which the connection bonus will more than compensate for.

One of the things that was not discussed in that thread is how to model the "Local Roads" since the area around the cities obviously do have roads. My suggestion is this - make an improvement called "Local Roads" (I'm sure someone can come up with a catchier name) which gives the road movement bonus to any worker in the city radius. And then have the "Subway system" give the RR bonus to any worker in the city radius. The existence of these improvements could be indicated on the map by changing the city graphic to have a road around it or rail around it. Keeping the visual cue in the city graphic itself would make the terrain much easier to see.

[SeferKoheleth]

Entertainers should generate 1 culture per turn. This would give a tremendous boost to high-culture populations, and simulate the cultural mega-plex that happens in large cities like New York or Paris.

It would also balance out the fact that entertainers basically suck now, because large pop civs have enough luxuries and city improvements to make people happy.

How about Hollywood as a Major Wonder:
1) NO cultural defection from captured cities
2) Increased likelihood that cities will defect to you

Hollywood-- the perfect powerful late-game wonder.

Also, the space race should be pushed back several turns to increase the usefullness of modern age improvements.

[SeferKoheleth]

Originally posted by Shadowstrife911
They should make the UN play a bigger role in the game besides the victory.

The UN should function like the Planetary Council in Alpha Centauri-- lots of "international treaties," and the person with the UN gets veto power.

Possible treaties:

Kyoto Treaty-- reduces pollution 50% in all cities

GATT Treaty-- adds 5 commerce points to every city

Nuclear Disarmarment-- all civs declare war on any civ to use nukes

Geneva Convention-- Cannot cature or use foreign national workers, cannot destroy cities

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

A lot of the ideas posted here I also had in my modified "CivStatsMod" excel file!
A carbon Reduction Protocol would be good to see, as would an emancipation tech (late middle ages) and Bill of Rights. I included a number of corruption reducing improvements and Sm. Wonders, such as Prisons, Parliament, Garrisons, Governers Mansions, Supreme Court, Federal Law Enforcement, Senate and Constitution (Great Charter!)
I also had a number of industrial age techs and improvements etc.
For Steel I had Skyscrapers, Refining allowed Gas Power plant and oil refinery, Combustion allowed early tanks and bi-planes, Flight allowed Spirit of St. Louis and so on. I had an increased number of production and financial improvements in every age but, to compensate, I felt that the cost of building new structures should increase at a greater rate in each age! Of course, what I really wanted was to make earlier improvements become obsolete, but that wasn't possible with the existing editor! There are a number of things that I hope wil now be do-able with the editor coming out later this month! If so, it might JUST be possible that we can Mod the game to increase or decrease the end-game tedium as much as we want!
Anyway, just my $0.02c worth!!

The_Aussie_Lurker.

[Imp. Montezuma]

Originally posted by SeferKoheleth


The UN should function like the Planetary Council in Alpha Centauri-- lots of "international treaties," and the person with the UN gets veto power.

Possible treaties:

Kyoto Treaty-- reduces pollution 50% in all cities

GATT Treaty-- adds 5 commerce points to every city

Nuclear Disarmarment-- all civs declare war on any civ to use nukes

Geneva Convention-- Cannot cature or use foreign national workers, cannot destroy cities

Cannot capture or use foreign... They did.
Better is penalty model.
Down Pollution! ->huge decrease production, unhappy
Down Nukes! - > embargo, no MMP, no PR, no Militar treaty, isolation
Down Slavery! -> decreasing production, increasing maintenance for slaves

[Panag]

Originally posted by kring


panag, when you say it's back: are you saying it is back in the 1.21f patch?

I know in the 1.16 patch, you could IFE, but you wouldn't get the shields after the first time.

hi ,

put the cd-rom in , play game , it should be Roman , small map , try it , over and over again , with patch 1.21 , ....

have a nice day

[kring]

I played 2 earlier games I had, neither Romans nor small map.

In both instances, I chop/plant several times; I only received the 10 shields the first time. To verify this, I built a new city; chose Temple. Sent over enough workers to chop/plant 4 times in the same turn (railroads, Democracy, and Replaceable Parts speeded up the process). While I did chop/plant 4 times, I only got 10 shields from it; as verified on the city screen.

[Sinapus]

Originally posted by kring
I played 2 earlier games I had, neither Romans nor small map.

In both instances, I chop/plant several times; I only received the 10 shields the first time. To verify this, I built a new city; chose Temple. Sent over enough workers to chop/plant 4 times in the same turn (railroads, Democracy, and Replaceable Parts speeded up the process). While I did chop/plant 4 times, I only got 10 shields from it; as verified on the city screen.

I'll have to test this, but I think if you plant a forest an a location that didn't have one and then cut it down, you'll get the 10 shield bonus.

Ahwell, I have some time off next week, so I guess I can use some of it by testing it out.

[kring]

You do get the bonus if you plant forest on previously unforested land.

[Panag]

Originally posted by kring
I played 2 earlier games I had, neither Romans nor small map.

In both instances, I chop/plant several times; I only received the 10 shields the first time. To verify this, I built a new city; chose Temple. Sent over enough workers to chop/plant 4 times in the same turn (railroads, Democracy, and Replaceable Parts speeded up the process). While I did chop/plant 4 times, I only got 10 shields from it; as verified on the city screen.

hi ,

well it remains a mistery , but this his how most people got it ;

the install the game , and patch 1.21 (!) , then they play a game , its always the Romans on a small map , and this is when they get it , over and over again , .....
its weird , some players got it , others not , ...then again some people use mods others not , anyway , it remains a mistery , ......

have a nice day

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Actually that bunker idea sounds good. Instead of making it a nuclear bunker, it could be an Air-Raid Bunker and reduces the chance of population being killed during an air raid (maybe also to damage done by Artillery and Ships, but then it would need to be called something else)
Also RR and road should cost an upkeep per turn if it is outside your city radius.

[Carver]

Originally posted by Ijuin


Units:

Have some sort of foot soldier with an attack of 6-8 available in the early Industrial Age (give it a defence of 3-4 so it will not replace Riflemen as a defense unit as well). This unit would require Saltpeter, and cost 80 shields or so. Call it the Grenadier or something. I ask for this because until Replacable Parts there is no unit other than Calvary with an attack higher than 4.

I used to think this as well, but now I see that Firaxis wanted to recreate the stalemate trench warfare of WWI and give the tank its true significance, the ability to break the stalemate.

[Carver]

small wonder: National Reconnaissance Office

Available with satellites, the NRO gives its owner global surveillance ablity. Does not see units inside cities or submarines. I have no idea why Firaxis left this out.

[Sirotnikov]

Stock Exchange would be nice.

Supermarkets and Superhighways should comeback (sorry if we have superhighways - haven't reached modern ages yet).

Malls could be nice too.

[zulu9812]

Originally posted by Carver
Available with satellites, the NRO gives its owner global surveillance ablity. Does not see units inside cities or submarines. I have no idea why Firaxis left this out.

Can you imagine how long turns would take if you had to view every single movement in the map?

[Carver]

Well if you turn off animation you should be okay. Allthough, I do remember playing CTP and watching the AIs move dozens of units around in circles for absolutely no reason.

[Lucilla]

Even with animation turned off, it will take quite some time. If you switch off "show enemy/friend moves", you might be able to see just troop positions with the proposed NRO.

[zulu9812]

Carver, I remember CTP2 as well. Global Satellite wonder? God - turns took forever!

[Panag]

Originally posted by Sirotnikov
Stock Exchange would be nice.

Supermarkets and Superhighways should comeback (sorry if we have superhighways - haven't reached modern ages yet).

Malls could be nice too.

hi ,

only railroads , but that is okay , for now , ..

there should be at least 2 era's extra , just put them between the ones that are there , ....

"refrigiration" should be back , allowing for a supermarket , it would create pollution , a bit more , ...but in return it would make one citizen content , ...

a hotel - motel would do the same , ...
there is room for more buidings , and it would be fun to put some more era's in to spread them in to it , ....and with some new tech's , ...

have a nice day

[Indignator]

Remember the public works system in CTP? It was horrible, but I like the fact that I didn't have to manage all of those engieeres/workers in late game. Why not combine the best parts of the two systems? On the map designate what improvments you want to have built, and then set your workers on automate, so they build what you want, not what they want.

[Stuie]

So it will be "Stock Exchange". Good.

I feel better just having participated in this thread. Now back to AOW2.....

[CivGeneral]

Add a new type of specialist (policeman) that reduces corruption/waste in the city, and add a Prison city improvement to increase its effect. The Alcatraz great wonder could then count as a prison in each city.

The Policeman can also make unhappy/resiting citizens content.