Inspired by Per's recent crusade against some of the (arguably) unnecessary complexity in the game, I thought I'd give it a go too.
What these suggestions all have in common is that their goal is to speed up the game, especially in the middle to late parts of the game. * Streamline the tech tree! I'm looking at the Civ1 version and it's gorgeous - so easy on the eyes compared to the tangled mess that is the Civ2/default one. Less techs means quicker advancement and speedier game. Some parts are obviously redundant, like the Polytheism-Monotheism-Theology branch that seems quite detached from the rest. I'd also like to cut down on some of the incrementally improved unit types, like Catapult-Cannon-Artillery-Howitzer (in Korean there's not even a clear linguistic distinction between Cannon and Artillery!) * Don't slow down game time! One game turn varying between 50 and 1 years depending on how long you've been playing is IMHO counter-intuitive. Instead, we could for example start in 1000 BC and then keeping each turn at a constant 10 years. Then it'd take you 300 turns to get to the year 2000, getting you to the modern era within a reasonable time frame. * Put a stricter soft cap of the number of cities! The main reason the late game becomes unbearable is because there are too many different things to build in too many cities with too many units to move around. So if there are less cities, there are less chores to do which lets you focus on winning the game instead! The tricky (and controversial) question is: how? Simple: if you grow too big and fat, you fall apart = civil war. All unhappiness is cumulative and builds towards civil war. To keep this process transparent, I suggest having a little icon in the vein of "global warming" and "nuclear winter" which when hovered over shows something like: Shows the progress of civil war: Civil unrest rate: x% Chance of civil war each turn: x% Alternatively, it could be a meter that fills up until it reaches 100% and civil war breaks out. This would make the event more predictable. Interestingly enough for gameplay, this mechanic would ensure the appearance of 'colonial' nations, famous examples being USA or Canada that was formed from British overseas territories. Then, as soon as initial fighting has ceased, 'colonial' nations should become friendly towards their 'mother' nations and potentially close allies. So even if your colonial empire is dissolved, you'll still have an edge in world politics. Maybe a fraction of former colonies' score could count towards your own final score, too? Oh, and another pet peeve of mine is that Bridge Building is required to build roads on river squares. This is just not user-friendly and probably leaves beginners clueless to why the R button doesn't work sometimes. </rant> ~Daniel, out _______________________________________________ Freeciv-dev mailing list Freeciv-dev@gna.org https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/freeciv-dev
