I know, I know. I'm a cynic.But I don't want to throw in my two cents after the game is released, with my handful of suggestions on how the game could have been a little better just by making some tiny changes here and there... changes that can't be made in the customization rules.
Like, what game statistics are included? Is there an overpopulation penalty? Crime? Corruption? Disease and health? Decadence? What are the values generated in a city? Food, trade, and production, probably, but have they added a new value? What is it? If we knew what sort of game values there were, we might be able to suggest ideas for City Improvements, Tile Improvements, Units, Governments, and all sorts of things that somebody might have overlooked.
Are there Feats of Wonder, as in CTP2? What are they? Are there goodie huts randomly generated on the map? What special resources are there? Are they fairly realistic, or are they dippy ones like in CTP? Do you have the option of naming landmarks? What about claiming territory and then fighting over it, diplomatically and militarily, with another civ? Have they decided to include only very near future tech, or do they look a full century ahead? What future techs did they choose? Are they feasible, or are they dippy like in CTP?
How are the cities set up? 21-square areas, with one citizen per square, as usual? Or are they tweaking the system slightly, maybe by expanding the city radius in the late game, or allowing two citizens to work a square?
What about tile improvements? Have they stuck with the Settler unit, or have they gone with CTP's "public works" system? Or have they adopted a compromise between the two? Will there be late-game roads with unlimited movement? (If not, will there be a way in the editors to define a road improvement with unlimited movement?)
What about combat? I mean, I'm a civilized Civ player most of the time. But I know this: Obsolete military units should fight at a severe penalty against modern units. Has somebody finally implemented this feature? I've got to know! Are the units going to stack? Are air units finally going to be immune to spears and pikes? I don't care so much about balancing the units... that can be fixed by editing the stats. I am slightly worried about the approach.
What about corporations, as proposed by Youngsun? Is this a pipe dream, or is it something that can really be implemented? Even if it's not in the main game, will the customization features and editors allow us to include them? Same with religion: Pipe dream, or reasonable expectation? All it would take is some recycling of the Social Engineering rules for Alpha Centauri. And it wouldn't even have to be implemented in the actual game, as long as the feature could used for scenarios and modpacks.
AAAAGH, it's driving me nuts. I mean, we're all creative people, and we can come up with Civ ideas for months. In fact, we did, about a year ago. But in some ways, accepting some limitations may have the effect of allowing our creativity to be more focused. If we only knew... if we only knew...
SOMEBODY JUST TELL ME! I'M DYIN' OVER HERE!
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