Note: I haven't played Civ V or VI.

So I was thinking on the matter of strategic resource, and how someone in the age of steam might be missing coal or iron in order to build their railroad.

So, then I though, "Why not offer an alternative to corporations and trade?" Like, wood or when discovered, diesel or electrical power. (And Uranium for the reckless.)

My thoughts went further, and I thought, "Wouldn't it be neat to set the standards for your civilization, in addition to the civics?"

For example, trade could go from no standards, to barter, and onward from there, which each system having advantages and disadvantages, some requiring a bonus resource or strategic resource to use.

And others, like electric rail could have a choice that when electric rail becomes viable, you can either pay to switch to electric rail and upgrade all rails at once (at great cost) or have workers upgrade the existing lines as you order them around.

As a side thought, I thought that when it came time to go from one age to the next that for one reason or another, there might be part of your civilization that don't advance, such as being too far out of reach to easily supply with the needed upgrades, lacking the actual resources to advance, or simply out of political spite. (Resistance to change)

So those are just some thoughts and ideas I had on the series. What are yours?

I wish finding an energy source was as important in the game as it is in real life. Starting in the Industrial Era, securing a source of coal, oil or uranium should be crucial, not just a nice bonus (I think now it is +50% production if you have built a factory in the city). At some point, cities would become less and less viable without energy (and the different sources should all have advantages and disadvantages). Building an energy network should be vital for modern cities, and losing access to electricity (maybe as sabotage or during wartime) should be devastating.

Technically, most cities aren't even considered powered until you build a dam or some other improvement; at least in Civ IV, where most of my cities don't gain the power symbol until I build the Three Gorges Dam, a very late game wonder.

Then you have played the best versions :) Keep it that way ;)

Okay, I'm curious. What do Civ V and VI screw up?

Honestly... it's mostly because it's different. At least that was often is said about the games - 'older was better' etc. While I'm not saying Civ5 is better (and I didn't play Civ6)... all goes for preferences. For example, my friend didn't like how the game felt 'smaller', and there is truth to it - the maps are smaller, you usually don't bulild as many cities, aside from AI that pretty much either dooms itself, or uses cheating to help itself. On the other hand - I prefer the combat system that is in Civ5. Instead of stacking big number of units in one tile, and the sacrificsing them along the way with combat bonuses stacking to riddicules ammouts, you have 1 tile = 1 unit, with exception of civic units that can also stand on one tile with a combat unit. But again, I just got used to that way, so playing again Civ4, after so many years, with normal difficulty (as ashemed it makes me, I only played Civ4 on easier ones... and now I can feel how much they dotted on you) quite a bit stings me. But... this is play and learn, so I'm putting up with this.
So summing this up - I would say it's a matter of perspective. Civ4 is considered the best and definetly there are fans who won't touch anything else. The newer games also, sadly, get's with quite a douche policy "ok, let's make ton of DLC which get's over the price of the original game, instead of implement them from the start". Civ5 isn't bad by itself, especially if you have (sic!) all of the main dlc to expand the game, just like with Civ4.

This has been discussed pages up and pages down elsewhere, but it's not because it's different. It's simply a worse game, much worse. Heck, even the designer of the game admits as much (about Civ 5).

Obviously I've not played Civ 6, because they continued down the same path as with 5, so I've got 5 in mind here. Warfare is a clusterfuck and logistical nightmare. Diplo likewise, with the AI amazingly even worse than in previous games. The game is much easier, even on the toughest difficulty (and for those who have played Civ4, Deity there is definitely no walk in the park). There is little depth to talk of in terms of techs, research paths and advanced strategies. Essentially, instead of building an empire, like you could in other games, you here build a few cities, grow, and win the game with little effort. Somehow they they managed to make the game slower too, despite removing all but the most essential UI, and the already mentioned depth. Quite an achievement in how to utterly mess up tbh.

Sadly this is how many once-great franchises have gone.

They changed the scale of the game. Fewer units, fewer cities, smaller maps. They are insisting in keeping 1 unit per tile, when even the lead designer of Civ5 (John Shafer) admitted it was a mistake.

The new games are shifting from "civilizations" to "countries". They are even prioritizing countries with big player bases for the new "civilizations" they are adding as DLC (they even added Australia to Civ6, while Portugal, the Incas or the Ottoman Empire are nowhere to be seen).

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Back to the original topic, there is a feature that I would have loved to have in Civ4: transfering food from one city to another. In the early ages it should come at a high price (for example, for each 3 units of food that you transfer, only 1 would arrive to the destination city). This would make cities without a food source viable, but you would need to have another city that could spare a lot of extra food (similar to how ancient Rome needed to constantly import food from the provinces to feed its population). Maybe have a new resource (salt?) as a requirement, or as a way to loosen the penalty. Wiith the refrigeration technology, which comes sufficiently late in the game, the transfer would become a lot more efficient.

I believe the new games do something like this with trade routes, but the food appears out of nowhere.

Another thing that I'd have liked is to take population from one city to another, made easier with roads, automated with railway; with the catch being that over long distance and outside your territory, you'd have to escort the migrants.

Some kind of migration mechanic would be another way to make cities without a good food source viable.

And maybe emigration between different civs. There was an approach in the Rhye's and Fall mod, but there the player has no control over the population shift.

You can move population by creating workers or settlers in a city and moving them to another city and have them join the new city.

Lemme check...

Nope, not possible in Civ IV.

Another one: after playing Alpha Centauri for a while, I feel there's a certain feature that would improve Civilization: altitude. Even if it's just for immersion purposes: maps feel a lot more real. There are same gameplay elements that are associated with it, of which at least one (combat bonus for certain units when attacking from higher altitude) would work for Civ.

You sort of have this in Civ 4, with the added defensive bonus when units are on hills (or forests). Doesn't work in an attacking sense when you are attacking from a hill, though.

Although when you have altitude in mind, the rivers created by Civ 4's random map generator are often comical, coming within a few tiles of the coast only to veer inland deep into the continent. In a few cases I've seen rivers literally cross from one end of the continent to the other.