Gameplay trumps Realism?

Its something like popular saying now, "gameplay trumps realism". Indeed you wont play a game which is boring, no matter how realistic it is. A game should be fun to play. But immersion (being a consequence of realism) adds to fun or magnifies it. So mechanics which increase immersion can be beneficial for the game even if they harm gameplay somewhat. The best is to use mechaincs which are realistic and fun at the same time. Its only hard to find such mechanics and make them work together.

Tall vs Wide, Culture and Science

Speed of social progress could be an inherent advantage of the tall, e.g. through a system of cultural maintenance. Having less cities and population and more culture generated per capita would mean more culture per turn and faster acquisition of new policies. Also smaller population may lead to faster tech diffusion. So small civs would be hard nuts to crack, having the potential for expansion on opportunity. Diffusion mechanic could make small civs overall scientifically stronger despite having less beakers per turn, with no need for per city science petalty for big civs.

Gods of Old

Made Gods of Old mod. Idea is, make faith more interesting. With this mod you have a choise - get an early boost to your development with pagan buildings, or go straight for religion to get possibly bigger bonuses later. And even if you are not planning to create your own religion, some early faith is useful. Also in this mod Great Prophet can be created with great people points, so going wide or having faith pantheon is not necessary to get a religion.

Use of territory

In the game there is alot of unused land. Maybe there should be a cheaper variant of settler (colonist?) to claim it which would allow to link up resources and deny passage but have no citizens to work on tiles (or capped at 2?). Resources, especially bonus resources, should have more use. Example is my Food Resources mod for Civ5: there are food buildings which consume bonus resources (like factory consumes coal) so the player is interested in getting more of them in his empire.

Some special unit like a Great Explorer may have an ability to occupy a large body of unowned land.

Emigration 6

Finished working on the next version of my most successfull Emigration mod. It is available in the Steam Workshop.

It took longer than i expected (as always, lol).

The whole migration system was reworked, as i felt the old mechanic based on probabilities was too much of a black box. Now i'm pretty satisfied with what i have. Not ideal though, as the AI doesn't know about it. I had to give happiness buildings and policies a growth flavor but forget about it.

Military Doctrines

Idea is to replace individual promotions with Military Doctrines, which would be promotions applied to units of certain level (green, tried, veteran, elite) empire-wide. Doctrines are created with Great Generals and hosted in military buildings (just like great works). E.g. Barracks for level 1 doctrines, which give bonuses to level 1+ (tried and above) units, Armories for level2 doctrines, Military Academies for level3. Pentagon or West Point also may have doctrine slots.

So there will be something to do for those excess great generals. Btw GGs may also have levels (like in my Commanders mod for civ4) so having a higher level would allow to create a superior Doctrine. GG promotions may help certain unit types so when your army upgrades, an old GG will have little use on the battlefield and should be better spent for a MD.

Individual units may still receive "occasional promotions" (like in my mod for civ4) which would be rare (depending on the chanse of surviving combat).

Military units also should be more expendable so the player could not conquer the whole world with his initial army of 5 units. This means more fragile, easy to die. There should be situations where the player have to sacrifice units (maybe even elite) to achieve tactical goals.

Rubber bands

Civ needs more "rubber bands". Currently there are only tiny tech discounts and espionage which is limited to midgame, when runaways dont have anti-espionage buildings yet. But even if there was a powerful mechanic like tech diffusion (actually there is a mod by Afforess), that still was not enough.

My idea is investment - trade routes to backwards civs are more profitable than to same level ones for the owner, and the destination civ gets even more. E.g. trade route owner receives much gold, and his underdeveloped partner gets alot of production and faster tech acquisition. Developed nations could even wage wars for markets, if incoming trade routes were limited.

Acceleration

Pollution/revolution mechanic could allow for a sort of trade-off, i.e. the player can develop really fast but in this case deferred effects on enivronment and society arise. So the player would plan when to "accelerate" and how to deal with consequences... It may feel like a driving simulator.

Specialists

I think most of the population should be specialists of some kind, at least after urbanization. Currently most ppl are farmers/miners and its strange and boring.

Among specialist effects there may be % change to yields, e.g. each enigneer provides +10% to production. This would lead to city specialization what civ5 lacks.

Sieges

cities should not heal if starving
maybe lose some hp per turn

land units should block nearby terrain from working just like sea units

No starvation in Civ Rev

Bought Civ Rev for my phone today.

Very interesting, theres no starvation.
Really, why to have it if cities only grow, 99.99% of the time.

As for me i always thought it would be cool to lay a siege to actually starve a city to the point it can be taken by assault (its defense ability should drop accordingly).