I like writing stuff, so I’m making one of these.

Keep districts:

Districts are great. I love them. They make sense, and they also add a lot of depth and complexity to city building. If districts won’t make a return, I’ll be very sad.

Make individual civs more unique:

What I’d love to see in CIV 7 is for each individual civ to be even more unique. Not just 2 rules and 2 units/buildings. What I’d love to see is:

1. A civ rule and 2 civ units/buildings. These are more general, usually not focused on one particular era unless there is one very indicative cultural element that would be crazy to leave out (like Samurai for example).
2. A leader rule and 2 leader units/buildings. These are specialized and often highly focused on the era the leader is from.

I’ll illustrate it with an example.

Japan in Civ 7

Civ/Leader	Rule	Unit/building/tile 1	Unit/building/tile 2
Japan	Civ rule: Meiji Restoration. Districts gain standard adjacency bonuses from being next to each other.	Samurai. Replaces Footknights, doesn’t lose combat strength when taking damage.	Kami shrine. Unique tile improvement. Grants faith and culture, grants bonus faith and culture on high appeal tiles. Grants tourism based on appeal once flight is discovered.
Oda Nobunaga	Bushido. Encampments are built in half the time. Encampment buildings give culture and faith.	Matchlock. Replaces Flintlocks, higher combat strength when fighting enemy melee infantry (civilian and professional).	Tekkosen. Replaces caravels. Bonus combat strength when defending against ranged attacks.
Hirohito	Empire of the Rising Sun. Cities with harbors gain bonus loyalty. Bonus increases if these cities were not originally founded by Japan. Aircraft carries have a special slot for fighters and spawn with the strongest available fighter.	Zero. Replaces the fighter plane. Has bonus combat strength if stationed on an aircraft carrier.	Yamato. Replaces the battleship. Has increased range and combat strength versus enemies who are further away.

So here we see two very specialized versions of Japan. All version of Japan gain Meiji Restoration, the Samurai, and Kami Shrine which will help them throughout the game. The Samurai is more focused around the Medieval era of course, but the other abilities are more general. Oda Nobunaga is built around Renaissance era domination. Hirohito is for Modern era naval domination.

I’m sure a lot of you could imagine more of these. Independence era USA with George Washington & Atomic Era USA with Harry Truman. Germanic tribe Germany, Holy Roman Empire Germany, and Prussian Germany. Ancient Egypt with Ramesses II & Classical era Egypt with Cleopatra. (Also, as for Egypt in general I think a really cool tile improvement could be a burial tomb that gives faith, culture, and tourism, and the FIRST TIME it is pillaged on that tile it gives a bunch of gold based on the era it was built in. So you as Egypt yourself can pillage it when the time is right to gain a bunch of money, but you gotta be careful that an enemy civ doesn’t do it first).

Era tech bottlenecks:

It’s a little strange that you can develop electricity without inventing the wheel (or hell, inventing mining). I think the game could benefit from some kind of technology bottleneck system. There are certain key technologies you must discover from each era. These technologies are often tied to a strategic resource.

Bottleneck technologies have a significantly higher science requirement than other technologies. But you gain research bonuses towards the bottleneck technology for each previous technology you researched. This gives you a reason to (mostly) fill out the tech tree. Additionally, they could add a mechanic where bottleneck technologies are easier to discover for every other civ that has discovered them, giving civs who are behind in science a way to catch up.

Era to era	Bottleneck Technology	Associated resource
Ancient to classical	Metal working	Iron
Classical to medieval	Ok, gonna be honest, this is the only era where I can’t really think of a bottleneck. So maybe this era could be open? Having 1 or 2 open eras could be interesting as well.	N/A
Medieval to Renaissance	Chemistry	Niter
Renaissance to industrial	Steam power	Coal
Industrial to modern	Refining (flight would be more fitting, but can’t really tie oil to that).	Oil
Modern to atomic	Nuclear fission	Uranium
Atomic to information	Computers	N/A

Researching these technologies will also always unlock a civilian soldier melee infantry unit (explained below).

Civilian soldier melee infantry:

A thing I think we can all agree is annoying is not having access to a resource and being unable to create basic melee units of a new era. Being stuck with warriors while the AI fields Men-at-arms. So that’s why I’d love to see civilian soldier melee infantry. These are weak combat units that do not require a resource, they’re usually unlocked at era tech bottlenecks, ensuring that everyone in an era has access to at least the civilian soldier unit of that era. This also means that civilian units will be unlocked earlier.

Civilian soldier units are usually about as strong as the professional soldier melee unit of the previous era. So a medieval era “men-at-arms” has the same combat strength as the classical era professional “Swordsmen”.

Civilian soldier units only exist as melee infantry. There are no naval civilian soldier units, cavalry civilian soldier units, ranged civilian soldier units, etc.

Civilian soldiers always have a professional soldier counterpart, these require resources. Civilian soldiers may be upgraded into professional soldiers for gold if you have the required resources. Civilian soldiers use the same promotion tree as professionals. They gain promotions at a reduced rate, encouraging you to upgrade into professionals.

Some civilizations / leaders have unique civilian units. Oda Nobunga would be an example. This often gives them an advantage early in the era, but these do tend to be weaker than a generic professional army counterpart.

Era	Civilian soldier unit	Professional soldier unit
Ancient Era	Ilkum	Warrior (could require bronze/copper)
Classical Era	Peasant Soldiers	Swordsmen
Medieval era	Men-at-arms	Footknights
Renaissance era	Flintlocks	Musketeers
Industrial era	Line infantry	Grenadiers
Modern era	Conscripts	Infantry
Atomic era	Militia	Commando
Information era	Drafted Soldiers	Mechanized infantry

I don’t know enough about military history to give all of these an accurate name, but hopefully you all got the idea.

Additionally I think letting is create obsolete units could be nice. Don’t have uranium for a nuclear aircraft carrier? Well, you can use an obsolete oil powered aircraft carrier instead.

Naval explores VS Naval melee

I don’t really know enough about historical naval warfare to make examples for this. But making dedicated naval explorer units that are different from naval melee combat units would be nice.

Also, naval combat units should be spread more normally throughout the eras. I feel like there really should be something between a Frigate and a Battleship.

Governments and ideology:

Making your own governments with the policy cards in Civ 6 is pretty cool, but I think we should go one step further. How about a completely modular government? Throughout the culture tree you will unlock civics which will give “issues”. We can answer these issues with policies. The policies we choose will shape our government ideology, which influences the opinion of other civs. Some civs gain bonuses if they’re a certain government type.

Example:

We research the slavery policy in the classical era. Unlocking the slavery issue, we now have multiple slavery policies like “slavery is illegal, criminals are punished with slavery, slavery is only legal for non-believers, slavery is only legal for foreigners, parents may sell their children into slavery, etc.” Picking the slavery is illegal option makes our civilization more freedom aligned, other freedom ideology civilizations will like this.

A civilization like the USA could have a rule like “Land of Liberty”, which boosts trade with other freedom ideology civilizations, and increases combat strength against authority ideology civilizations, but only if they’re freedom aligned themselves.

Opposing ideologies:

Each ideology has an opposite. When you go deep into one ideology, you naturally stray away from its opposite.

Ideology	Opposing ideology
Freedom	Authority
Dove (Peaceful)	Hawk (Warlike)
Globalist	Nationalist
Pious	Secular

Civilizations can also easily be neutral. A government can be neutral on Dove VS Hawk, not explicitly favoring one over the other.

AI leaders will naturally develop into certain ideologies. Gandi will always be a Dove Nationalist (with some nukes on standby). George Washington will be a Freedom Nationalist. Victoria is a Globalist Hawk, etc.

Thanks for reading

And don’t be afraid to give feedback or share your own ideas. I might also post some more civ/leader ideas I had in a comment below.