Discuss.
What new features would you love to see?
Personally, I would like more content towards the latter parts of the game. Once you reach the 20 century, the game is a bit dull. And I am not talking just about the units, I want new political and economic systems, new religions, new leaders, etc.
Awesome. I didn’t really need to sleep or eat for most of this winter anyway. I just wonder if my aging laptop will be able to run it.
If you don’t have to eat you can afford a new computer 
I’m not going to buy it.
Not until it comes out in the “gold” or “complete” edition, anyway. I hate patching. I also hate spending $X for the first edition, $X for the second and all later expansions…and then seeing the gold or complete edition come out, and it is also priced as $X, plus it doesn’t need to be patched, because they’ve found and squished all the bugs.
My life has a new purpose.
Civ1 for the SNES took up most of my afternoons through early middle school. Civ3 negatively affected my grades in high school. Civ4 affected my grades through the end of college and grad school. Now I hear that Civ5 is coming out when I really need to be concentrating on my job search.
The only thing I can conclude is that Sid Meier is intent on me failing in life.
As far as additions go, they need to make it so you can set a technology cap. For example, I’d love to play a game where you don’t move beyond using musket-men and cannons, or elephants and catapults, etc.
Secondly, I’d like the end tech-tree fleshed out a bit more. The game has a robust military system up until the end, when it basically turns into a mech infantry slug-fest.
Seconding this. I only moved over to Civ 4 once the Gold edition was here (having to upgrade computers probably contributed as well I guess).
Why couldn’t this come out next year? This game is totally going to screw up my school work!
Hexes!
Yay!
The hex grid should make things interesting. Whenever I play a Civ game I hate having city radii overlap, so I end up with a lot of unused space.
If I had to choose one feature to add, I’d pick a religion system like in the last few Total War titles: Each region tracks the religous breakdown of its population in percentages. Missionaries and religous buildings shift the percentage towards their religion each turn. The greater the proportion of a regions population that has a religion other than your state religion, the harder it is to maintain order.
A Civ game could take this idea and expand upon it. Instead of a public order bonus for having a region mostly your state religion, you could have a bonus based on your religon civic. In Civ IV terms, a theocracy would, instead of a flat +2 experience bonus, get +1 at 60%, +2 at 75%, and +3 above 90%. The build bonus from organized religion could be more gradual; maybe even 1% per point above 50%.
At the very least, make it so that the presence of seven different major religions in a city isn’t always harmonious.
Is it wrong that i’m more excited about the possibility of a new fall from heaven mod than the actual game?
The thing that makes the end-game slog down for me is the tremendous number of units and cities in the end. I’d love some way of scaling control. Maybe once the game reaches a certain point, cities start to merge into metropolis areas, so you’re still managing fewer than a dozen or so areas; and maybe end troops were understood to be fleets with viciously large areas of control, such that you don’t need dozens upon dozens of troops to fight a war.
Oh, I thought of something else: Longer game speeds that only stagnate research, not build speeds, city growth, etc. . In Civ IV I found that my armies would be obsolete before I could deploy a decent-sized force. I want protracted wars, particularly in the classical and medieval eras, where new weapons technology isn’t a given.
I would like a more comprehensive diplomacy, it would require an extensive AI overhaul but with the options so limited (open borders, panhandled declarations of war, etc.) I always feel like I’m competing with robots. In my opinion that is one area Civ IV could vastly be improved that Civ enthusiasts just cannot add.
I’d like advisors to give warnings as well, I know you can consult them for general shit but micromanagement is a bitch. I’d like my War Minister to pipe in and say “Hey, so last turn our culture view picked up 10 Trebuchets and a horde of Cataphracts on the Byzantine border. They’re peaceful right now and maybe it’s nothing but just, you know, FYI.”
As someone who has a number of wargamer genes, I’d love to see the combat, which I find to be too generic and dull, to have an overhaul (including a tactical combat screen for important battles). And I know I am a minority of one, but I’d love to see the animated advisors make a comeback (assuming they could be modded for even more hilarity)-hell make the leaders animated while you’re at it (more animated than some smirks and wan smiles that is).
[Read the press release]-might actually get my wishes.
One thing I missed that was in Civ 1 & 2, the palace. I enjoyed being able to upgrade my palace, it was a nice way to see just how good you were doing in the game.
If Civ IV is any guide, it’ll be years before there’s a Mac version released, and then years more before computers actually attain the ludicrous system requirements it’ll have on a Mac. Not that I’m bitter, or anything.
I’d like the Foreign Advisor to let me know when I might be able to negotiate a better deal, and just what that better deal might be. If I offer to swap techs, he should pipe up and say “They’ll never go for that, but maybe if you offer them 100 gold they might go for it.” THAT would be more useful.
You could do this in Civ III, too. You had your choice of five (?) architechtural styles, and each upgrade could be done in a different style, if you wanted.
I admit, I didn’t remember if Civ III allowed this. I probably played Civ III less then any of the others, it was the Civ that was out when I was addicted to Diablo II… (which then brings up the point, Diablo III and Civ V are coming out around the same time? When the hell will I have time to go to my rotations!)
Honestly, unless it has real time battles a la Total War I’m probably not interested. I loved Civ but I’ve been there and done that already.
(Ok…looks sheepish…I probably WILL buy it anyway. But I wish it would have real time tactical battles)
-XT