A vision for civ

[T-hawk]

Culture avoiding hills is an oversight. The formula is supposed to shun rough terrain, except it wasn't considering that often you want that rough terrain. Shame that it wasn't patched though, since it was well known before the first expansion.

Removing tile flips from Civ 5 is perfectly okay by me. It allows excising that whole game subsystem of tile ownership culture. Which was far overly mathematical, understood by a tiny fraction of players and misunderstood by most, invisible within the game, counterintuitive in how it interacted with city culture, and had really weird interactions with instant culture sources like artist bombs and the spy spread mission.

[Westbrook]

Like Sirian, I love the range mechanic from MOO1. It would be interesting to implement it into the Civ series using some sort of unit supply mechanic: can't get too far from one of your cities without risking starvation or dehydration. Of course, it needs a few mechanics to get around the range limitations, like for scouting. This could be done in the usual way by adding extra build time or sacrificing power/utility.

The removal of distance based costs was a welcome change. There is already a cost/risk associated with having your cities spread out. It shouldn't be completely unworkable to have colonies on other continents, as it was in Civ4 a lot of the time. It can be hard enough to get to the New World, settle it, and defend it, without the city also arbitrarily costing more in maintenance than your other cities. If you make the extra investment to get a foothold in a new part of the map, it should have the ability to be just as valuable as your core, instead of remaining a financial liability.

I lament the weak terrain of Civ5. Some of Civ4's resource bonuses were crazy good, but I don't feel my city placement matters quite as much in Civ5. Especially the food resources.. When I first realized how useless they were, it was such a disappointment. Not good game design.

As for Civ5's cultural borders, I have mixed feelings. Earning individual tiles sequentially is more interesting than fixed ring expansions. However, I dislike how the game gives you no control over what tiles you pursue culturally. Moreover, I think you lose a fun dynamic without the somewhat fluid tile ownership that led to the border wars of Civ4. Perhaps if culture investment in a tile over time determined the strength of a civ's hold on that tile, we could enable the choice between putting a little culture in many tiles or lots of culture in just 1-2..

I think Civ5's expansions helped the game immensely with their new mechanics: Religion was well done in G&K, especially how it was founded and spread and how believers exerted their influence. Using faith to buy religious units and buildings was also different. I like that in Brave New World, the new trade routes can be plundered if not protected (setting up risk/reward situations).

Things i want to see the most in future games, and which were mentioned in Sullla's New Civ article and stolen from MOO1, are (1) the randomized tech ladder with missing elements and (2) the ability to make huge numbers of units if you have the production for it (obviously that means more than 1UPT).

[Borsche]

Culture avoiding hills is an oversight. The formula is supposed to shun rough terrain, except it wasn't considering that often you want that rough terrain. Shame that it wasn't patched though, since it was well known before the first expansion.

Removing tile flips from Civ 5 is perfectly okay by me. It allows excising that whole game subsystem of tile ownership culture. Which was far overly mathematical, understood by a tiny fraction of players and misunderstood by most, invisible within the game, counterintuitive in how it interacted with city culture, and had really weird interactions with instant culture sources like artist bombs and the spy spread mission.

If you wanted to bring back tile flips, it would make far more sense to put it in diplomacy. Making it a system by which you can negotiate for plots of land during post-war, or for different trades would be much more intelligent than the current system of culture. The problem for it would just simply be allowing for the AI to understand it in an intelligent fashion, which, as always, is difficult.

[Huinesoron]

If you wanted to bring back tile flips, it would make far more sense to put it in diplomacy. Making it a system by which you can negotiate for plots of land during post-war, or for different trades would be much more intelligent than the current system of culture. The problem for it would just simply be allowing for the AI to understand it in an intelligent fashion, which, as always, is difficult.

Or maybe even more pseudo-realistic: give military units a one-turn action to take control of a space, while at war. That would be more like how thing worked pre-UN, with countries holding onto whatever they sent their troops into. Then you could have a blanket 'return to status quo ante bellum' option in treaties, and probably a setup option to always return land at the end of wars. If the UN has votes other than Win The Game, one could be to insist on always going SQAB.

The advantage here is that it allows you to shorten supply lines without necessarily taking cities, to undertake minor wars over borderlands - rather than either getting it for free or simply having to live with it - it allows enemies to fight back and cut your supply lines - and having the diplo option as all-or-nothing makes it distinctly less micro-y.

(Additional diplo option: 'give me all territory within 3/4/5 hexes of my cities'.)

[Westbrook]

Or maybe even more pseudo-realistic: give military units a one-turn action to take control of a space, while at war. That would be more like how thing worked pre-UN, with countries holding onto whatever they sent their troops into. Then you could have a blanket 'return to status quo ante bellum' option in treaties, and probably a setup option to always return land at the end of wars. If the UN has votes other than Win The Game, one could be to insist on always going SQAB.

The advantage here is that it allows you to shorten supply lines without necessarily taking cities, to undertake minor wars over borderlands - rather than either getting it for free or simply having to live with it - it allows enemies to fight back and cut your supply lines - and having the diplo option as all-or-nothing makes it distinctly less micro-y.

(Additional diplo option: 'give me all territory within 3/4/5 hexes of my cities'.)

I love the idea of skirmishes over specific tiles' control. If a city 'owns' a tile 3 hexes away but isn't able to defend it, why should we have to capture the city to gain control? Right now, putting a unit on a tile prevents an opponent from working it, but you get no real benefits. This mechanic could be difficult to balance though, easily becoming overpowered, because you want culture to remain important. You might let higher levels of cultural output provide immunity to occupation by weaker units and require more turns of occupation before it flips control. Plus add extra maintenance or happiness costs for extended occupations. Not for the sake of penalizing the aggressor, but to force strategic considerations of which tiles to target (since it would be prohibitively expensive to occupy them all). I like how this system would reflect the real world challenges of maintaining a widespread empire and occupying foreign land. If you have an efficient civilization, though, and are able to field a large army, you should be able to control many tiles for a long time (eventually risking economic collapse or civilian displeasure).

Furthermore, in Civ 5, I hated that capturing a city caused all the culture to immediately flip to the conquering civ. It was a totally unrealistic game design and also a little bit broken. In Civ 4, capturing a city removed enemy culture, but you had to build up your own culture from scratch, and neighboring cultural powerhouses could engulf your new prize. This system of battling over tile control would enable you to take over parts of a city's outlying territory early on, but make it a little harder to make progress toward the next city since you wouldn't automatically gain half the hexes between them upon city capture.

I love the idea of adding hex ownership to diplomacy. A chance to redraw borders after each peace treaty. How much is your territory really worth?

[T-hawk]

This sort of mechanic in making tile ownership subject to war and diplomacy has come up many times for the Civilization series. Ultimately it adds a lot of complexity that isn't really worth it. Civ (especially 5) is meant to be an abstraction from hyper-detailed grognard war games, and territory is meant to be abstracted up to the city level. It really wouldn't be more fun to have to conquer tiles one by one. The concept of "redrawing a border" doesn't work nearly as well as you think once you consider all the edge cases of unowned tiles or third parties or city-states or lakes or whatever.

And you'd get super pissed when on the receiving end -- remember all mechanics should work in both directions. Who here likes it when the Civ 4 AI sabotages tiles with spies? Do you want the AI popping up with a demand that you fork over your hard-earned tiles?

[Westbrook]

This sort of mechanic in making tile ownership subject to war and diplomacy has come up many times for the Civilization series. Ultimately it adds a lot of complexity that isn't really worth it. Civ (especially 5) is meant to be an abstraction from hyper-detailed grognard war games, and territory is meant to be abstracted up to the city level. It really wouldn't be more fun to have to conquer tiles one by one. The concept of "redrawing a border" doesn't work nearly as well as you think once you consider all the edge cases of unowned tiles or third parties or city-states or lakes or whatever.

And you'd get super pissed when on the receiving end -- remember all mechanics should work in both directions. Who here likes it when the Civ 4 AI sabotages tiles with spies? Do you want the AI popping up with a demand that you fork over your hard-earned tiles?

I think you're right, T-hawk, that the extra complexity might not add enough depth or fun. Maybe. That's the big concern. However, if balanced properly and given an efficient UI, I bet we could streamline the system and make it simple, fun, and interesting. I still prefer Civ4's handling of captured cities' cultural territory, even if it was slightly more complex than Civ5's. In my imagined system, I tried to specifically avoid it being about "conquering [all] tiles one by one." That should be cost prohibitive and, yes, a waste of time. If you feel the need to take over the whole countryside and have the units to do so, then you might as well just take the city. The system should shine when fighting over key individual tiles; it should also prevent all surrounding tiles from immediately flipping ownership upon city capture (overpowered/unrealistic).

I get what you're saying about being on the receiving end of annoying mechanics, but don't the Civ games already have city trading via diplomacy? How can it be bad to be able to trade individual hexes but OK to allow trading entire cities? Sirian and Sullla tried to get an AI to give them a trash city in their RB1 Hydra SG game so they could island hop within their variant rules; do you really think that diplomacy option shouldn't even be there (even as a pre-game toggle)? Yes it could get annoying if the AI came making stupid demands; that is already a problem though.. The key is to not have insane/stupid AI personalities (like Civ5 v1.0) who make unreasonable/crazy demands. Personally, I don't think I ever received an AI demand to just give up a city, even though it was an option. Demands for tiles could be programmed to be almost as rare. But there might be times when a trade of that kind makes sense, even moreso with individual tiles instead of whole cities. Think about it: if you're against a strong military power and their immediate desire is just one specific tile, wouldn't you prefer giving it to them if it meant avoiding/delaying invasion?

As for AI sabotaging, I thought it was pretty well accepted that the whole espionage system wasn't implemented well. In theory, there's nothing wrong with having spies to sabotage enemy improvements. However, the EP investment cost was never worth it, so humans rarely even used the system; when the AI did, it was viewed as wasteful and silly. Even worse, it was an invisible system with minimal two-way strategy; defending against sabotage was uninteresting or useless, and getting hit by a spy almost seemed like a Random Event. No one's going to build defensive spies, and constructing Intelligence Agencies just didn't add much depth.

So. I'd argue the problem is not gameplay elements that are harmful or damaging or threatening to you (indeed, such mechanics are kind of essential to even have a game -- imagine an opponent who couldn't build military units because you might end up "on the receiving end" of them!). What you're really concerned about is mechanics that are uninteresting, or too complex without enough depth, or add tedious micromanaging without sufficient interesting choices. The tile ownership proposals weren't even that dramatic of ideas/changes. I think it's possible they could be implemented intelligently, adding some depth while avoiding the pitfalls of broken mechanics that ruin a game.

[Hail]

yeah. corruption is a punishing mechanic. but there is no way around it though. there must be some mechanic to limit ICS. otherwise ICS becomes the best strategy. if it is the best strategy - it becomes the only strategy.

As Sullla pointed out though, corruption doesn't limit ICS. Neither does Civ4 maintenance, although it does a much better job than corruption of slowing expansion down. Corruption makes some cities weak, but never causes a city to be a net negative for your empire in any dimension. As a result, since claiming more land and getting another build queue on the board are usually more than worth the price of a settler on their own, near-ICS expansion is ~always the right answer in a corruption-based game like Civ3.

There are ways to actually limit ICS though: Expensive but powerful multiplier buildings (especially multiplier Wonders) can help because they make a city with a full BFC of tiles to work potentially more valuable than several smaller cities sharing the same tiles. Allowing multiple builds to complete on the same turn would help a lot in situations (e.g. cash-rushing, whipping, city with massive production) where it is reasonable to expect at least one build to finish per turn. Taking away the free stuff you get with the city center tile (as Wyatan mentioned) and/or making it easier to grow existing cities larger would also make ICS less appealing.

I agree. the more I think about it, the more I lean toward getting rid of corruption altogether.
Instead, gold for any purpose can only be used from the capitol's supply. other cities must physically transport gold (as any other yield) to the capitol.

But there is a problem though: I want influence to be global. without corruption, a new city will immediately begin spreading influence around itself.

Absolutely, the city tile must yield nothing. all buldings/wonders must provide per pop bonuses. such changes will (should?) make city spam less appealing.

On pop growth: The current logarithmic model encourages city spam. civ5 is really bad in this regard.
anyway, the pop growth mechanic that I envision is this: pop can work tiles, work as specialists in buildings, or idle. each turn the idle pop in a city is increased by some percentage that linear correlates with health amount. my growth mechanic is exponencial.

for example: a city has 300 idle pop, 10 heatlh, each health grants 3% -> the city will grow by 300 * (10 * 3%) = 90 pop next turn.

[Hail]

first post updated.

notably, corruption is gone.

[Hail]

civ vi wa released more than two months ago, so it's time to draw some conclusions with the intent to enrich my game vision.
it's two-fold: *.A is I state what civ6 has and *.B is what I think about it.

1.A. government types, civic, civic cards and card slots:
civ vi uses the same Bioshock mechanic with several notable differences: some government types (early ones) have less total slots, there is a penalty for returning to a previously "used" government type, culture is not used to buy (adapt) civic cards, and some government types have a wildcard slot(s). I should also mention a bonus per government type that grows with the number of turns a player stays in the said government. some freebies still remain on the tech tree (like Apprentinceship's "+1 cog to mines").

1.B. too bad civ6 uses the same mechanics. would have been more interesting if civ6 had something geniunely new. on the positive side, the Bioschock mechanics do work. I do not endorse penalties for returning and the notion that some government type are simply worse than others. Sid's theme of "continual progress" can be achieved by other means. imo wildcard slots decrease the differences between government types, so no-go there as well. the bonus that grows with time is cool, but I feel it should be moved to the cards themselves. freebies like "+1 cog to mines" are ideal candidates for [industrial] civic cards. btw, why there is no self-evident industrial civic category (DLC & expansion material, I guess)? are a fashism/communism *cracies? communism can be the rule of the proletariat (a democracy) or be the rule of comrade Stalin (an autocracy) or the rule [of elite] of the communist party (an aristocracy).

2.A. one unit per tile issue(s).
2.B. SoD for the win. case closed. no traffic jams, no helicopter entering a water tile and morphing into a boat bullshit.

3.A. two separate tech/civic trees.
3.B. one tree is enough. civics (cards) are gained the same way as unit/building types - by researching techs. civic adoption costs culture (influence).

4.A. eurekas/inspirations.
4.B. actually add nothing in the long-term - no trade-offs, no conflicts - do it and win: I always build a slinger, kill a barb with it, upgrade it to an archer and build\buy two more. I am certain am not the only one going through the motions. leave one forested tile near a river for a lumbermill anyone? most eurekas/inspirations are primitive and can (should) be hit in every game, while others are RNG-based (find 3 city states, find a national wonder, etc.).

5.A. worker is a builder with limited charges.
5.B. more micro for the same price. public works for the win.

6.A. unstacking the cities - districts and buildings limited to a district (adjacency bonuses will be mentioned separately).
6.B. looks good on paper, but suffers from balance issues, notably, campuses and theater districts are mostly useless, due to the low cost of techs/civics and 50% eureka/inspiration bonuses. the nerf to regional buildings makes IZ and entertainment district spam much less attractive, but commercial districts and harbors still grant one TR. so... I wonder how Firaxis plans to balance it all, but I shall exclude districts from my game. the change to airports and air unit stationing is cool though.

7.A. new movement rules (I assume everyone is familiar with them).
7.B. on the positive side, new rules simplify the pathfinding algorithm, but at the same time create alot of situations where a unit has movement left, but cannot enter any desired tiles (e.g. a lot of pressing "end unit's movement" ). I think that movement costs should be enforced. I propose to add a fatigue (unit type and experience dependant) attribute that the unit can expend to move further on a given turn. any unused movement points are used to replenish fatigue. units entering combat with low fatigue shall be penalized.

a warrior has 2 movement points and 1 fatigue movement point. on that turn, it can use up to 3 movement points. say he used them all, then on the next turn the unit may move one hex and end turn. the second movement point will replenish fatigue.

8.A. last, but not least is terrain improvements and adjacency bonuses.
8.B. what's up with the mountain adjacency fetish? anyway, what Ed Beach achieved with his adjacency rules is that mountains are now a form of freebies like goody huts. it is not evident now because the tech/civic costs are low. farm adjacency is a great idea. the fundamental difference is that farm adjacency rewards player planning, while terrain type adjacency is just plain map generator luck.