Is immersion important?

I would like to be able to adjust treaty lengths, and tell them I am going to break a treaty.

Immersion isn't for everyone, but I've tended to 'role-play' TBS games since Civ 1. Your list is a good start on cataloging immersion problems in the game so far.

Off the top of my head, I'd add: I don't like having detailed info on other factions without having made some investment in spy units or abstracted intelligence spending. It's bad enough to have that if I've run across a rival's units or settlements, but it's just weird to have it for factions that I've never encountered on the map.

I think it's kind of ridiculous that a merchant can just appear out of thin air anywhere in your territory:

"Yo Bilkins, we need some ceder longbows before we attack that fire-breathing cave drake over there!"

Bilkins: "no problem, the merchant is standing right behind you, and there's another one by that rock about 20 feet back, there was also one by the fig tree, the alligator swamp 200 yards north, on that mountain top over there, by the coast 6 miles back, near that rift over there .. I also have one in my back pocket, all I got to do is pull him out and he's here already, wallah!"

Sorry, being able to access a merchant or item store from anywhere in your territory is just ridiculous to me & takes away from the game. In fact, I think item shops should only be available in towns where a merchant building has been constructed, no merchant, no access to goods.

You can sign a non-aggression pact and enter other AI lands. Being able to stroll next to an AI capital with an uber stack without declaring war and just sneak attack it would simply make the game unplayable .. the AI is already a military pushover, why excacerbate this?

Adjusting treaty lengths is a good idea. I've never had a problem breaking a treaty by declaring war. I don't see anything wrong with keeping players to their agreements. 

You know what I'd like?  I'd like to have the option to hide the tech tree paths.  Maybe have a lot more randomness in tech.

What if you could set a research path and you'd head down that path, making advances,  but might get some related tech once in a while?  Picking what to focus on makes sense . . picking a tech does not.

In related news . . a civ-wide research pool makes little sense.  Unless there is a means of communicating (like a caravan) between cities, research should be based on researchers, right?  More caravans = more information traveling back and forth = faster research.

Moving an army through another players sovereign territory without permission is how you get a war started.  Belgium anyone?

The AI would be a pushover only because the AI is a pushover already.  If it recognizes the hostile act for what it is, it will respond accordingly, declaration or not.

Moving troops through another nation without permission should come with stiff diplomatic penalties, the other sides should recognize your lack of respect for sovereignty, the side you've invaded should be particularly pissed off about it as it's their sovereignty you've decided to ignore.  The more troops you're moving, the worse the fallout gets.

Declaring war should require that you have no troops inside their sovereign territory already.  Attacking without a declaration is a sneak attack.  Moving inside and then declaring war would be a poorly designed end run around reasonable diplomacy mechanics.

Sneak attacks should come with massive relation penalties.  The side that sneaks up on another is the first side the others would want to get rid of.  Your allies will drop you like a bad habit, you aren't trustworthy.  The same goes for breaking treaties, it should hurt like hell.

Declaring war on someone invading your territory should come with none of the normal penalties, it's a justified attack.  Any defensive pacts they have would be ignored as they were the aggressor.

The separation of champion/regular soldier equipment has always driven me nuts. Say I have 200 gold and 100 metal, I can equip a group of soldiers in full plate, and yet I can't afford to buy a pair of gauntlets for my sovereign - why can't I just make the damn things? I just want a "shop" (you could call it a forge or armory or whatever, but it would function just like the current shop) where you can "buy" (i.e. make) champion equipment from actual materials/metal/crystal/etc, not absurd amounts of gold.

Of course this would wreak havoc with the current system where somehow a champion's breastplate is deemed to be 100x more valuable than a common soldier's breastplate despite identical stats; a complete re-evaluation of champion equipment costs would have to go along with this seemingly simple change. I happen to think said re-evaluation is long overdue anyway, but that's another discussion.

OK.  I know this makes no sense at all from a gameplay standpoint and I can't think of a way to mitigate the way I feel about it . . but playing the role of the sovereign (as an individual character walking around the map) and the all-knowing sovereign that sees what every city is doing at a moments notice.

I get that *I* am also the puppet master of every character& and every city but the mix of the two blows my mind sometimes. Having governors in the cities might mitigate the off-ness I get.

Funny enough in the campaign it tells you that you have to buy form the shop in the city.... Because of that I was always bringing people back to the city to buy equipment.. At least I know I don't have to now.... Of course if movement was increased for all units which it should be then going back to the city to buy stuff wouldnt be too bad anyway.

I'm confused.  I can only access the merchants when I am inside or adjacant to A settlement.  Did I miss an 'update?'

I want governor champions for many reasons. They might indeed help a bit with the dissonance between 'my character' the sovereign and the player's unexplained semi-omniscience.

Requiring that governors be imbued champions and having the imbuing process establish a psychic link could smooth out that wrinkle. So could some sort of scrying magic/abilities.

Very early on, I'd really hoped to see the capital have some distinctive UI aspects, sort of a corollary to the never-happened 'massive bonuses for cities with their sovereign stationed in them.' I'd even imagined that champions in the field without some paid-for magical connection to the boss would be on autopilot unless the boss was at home in her sanctum.

It seems to me you use "immersive" where I'd use "realistic" or "logical". I played D&D back in the day, but I could never get into the "acting" part of it, just wasn't my shtick. I've always been a strategy game player though, whether board or PC.

I agree with what you're saying. The problem is, the AI would not be able to effectively do all these things whereas the human would reap the full benefit. Simply being able to make the AI fight a tactical battle reasonably and moving troops without them getting "stuck" would be a huge improvement and takes top priority. An AI that is capable of being able to effectively do all these things you say in this post is at least a year removed (probably) in capability, and it's just not such a priority as the other things are. 

In another thread somebody pointed out that you can press ctrl "s" or just "s" and an item shop would magically appear in your square if in your territory. I thought this was a cheat code or hack, but apparantely it was an intended design feature from what someone else said in another post.

While I agree about some of the diplomatic options (there are of course implications for all of them)...

... the roleplay argument against shops everywhere is a bit strange. There's nothing stopping you from roleplaying that shops are only in town and you have to go back to town to buy stuff. Limiting yourself like this is something that people who roleplay do rather often...

As for the problem itself, I believe the reason shops are always available inside your territory is because otherwise updating champion equipment becomes a chore. Everytime you can afford something, you'd have to send him or a ferry to bring him equipment, which, while making sense, isn't exactly fun. There's nothing to "gain" by micromanaging a ferry. So this process got abstracted into the current form, where you can shop everywhere inside your territory. The idea being, that the item would get delivered to you, not that there's a shop keeper behind every other tree.

So to answer the OP, while immersion is nice to have, you'll often find that when immersion comes at the cost of gameplay, it is usually abstracted.

from another post:

Units are too slow in this game, the devs made rules under the wrong assumption that having slow units gives a sense of epic. Then they feel forced to create other artificial rules to make things feel right or at least bearable. Having omnipresent merchant is one of them, since going back and forth from the city would really be annoying when you have just 2 movement points. They created teleport out of frustration of not being able to move fast enough (which definitely spoils the sense of epic)... teleport is the element that spoils the game for me actually, if I have to pick one.

It's not about "limiting" it's about logic & realism.

"Usually" but not always. There are games that go the other end of the scale and take "simulation" to a whole new level. There are even "physics" modeling software apps for games that take the whole concept of "realism" to the extreme. In fact, imo, I think most game players expect games to be in the ballpark-zone, so to speak, of logic as to gameplay.

Many of the arguments/problems that people post about in this forum are "breakdowns" of "logic" at some level. For example: the heirs with unbelivable mana or 15 movement, teleporting at a cost of 2 mana, maces being no different from swords in this game, overpowered archers, buildings that require "food" to maintain (instead of people requiring food), and most other arguments that I read about.

Even in a fantasy RPG it comes down to some minimum level of "logic" and realism that players come to expect. My opinion is that having a merchant appear from anywhere (regardless of "gameplay" ease) is unrealistic & is more of a distraction than a positive thing. I haven't used "s" since I found out about it, but that's just me. Being able to buy a slew of potions of healing & speed just before crossing the border & fighting that big fight with Kuhla Kahn of Yithril is just ... I don't know .. I just don't have the words. Gameplay is not the word I would use to describe it (maybe "gamey"), broken or overpowered is more accurate from my POV. 

I'm sure that there are a certain percentage of players with the opposite viewpoint, but I would be willing to bet $20 that a majority of strategy gamers subscribe to this pov even if they're fantasy RPGrs. 

Logic is nice but can often be overruled by magic.

What I value most for immersion is consistency.  I can create dozens of swords with the heap of resources I own but I can't afford even a single sword of the exact same type for my sovereign.
That's one of those WTF moments...

Black-Knight has a good point about units being too slow.

It would be interesting and possibly useful if there were a move multiplier in the game setup to handle different play styles.

I can agree with this, but even magic has some level of logic associated with it. For example: you would expect the mana (essence) cost of spells to be proportional to its capability. This is logical & reasonable. Something like fire dart that does less damage should only cost 2 essence whereas immolation (or whatever that spell is called) costs 6 essence but has a wider range of effect & does more damage. Also, raising monsters that are stong in-and-of-themselves and who can cast spells on their own should be proportionally more expensive (an earth giant costs 15 essence instead of 5). So, even magic has some minimal "logic" to it that player's come to expect .. what was the first thing players did when they felt "teleport" was overpowered & broken at 2 essence? ... they increased the cost to a more "logical" and "reasonable" 15 mana (the percieved "value" of the spell).

Being from a tactical strategy-game background, I sort of equate magic with artillery. A fire dart is roughly equivalent to a bazooka which should be less expensive than an 81 mm bn. mtr. fire mission which is analagous to immolation.

Exactly my point, it comes back to some minimal level of "logic" and "realism".

A game should at least be consistent unto itself and if it also seems plausibly realistic in our world all the better..