Gyra Solune
King
- Joined
- Jul 1, 2013
- Messages
- 942
(wall of text time!)
I've proposed this system in various places, but I thought I might as well outline the whole thing here. Basically, this is a concept whereupon city-states, an evolution of them in nations, and full-blown civilizations emerge over time, instead of all being founded at once.
The most basic system of this revolves around barbarian encampments having certain conditions that they reach in order for them to become a city-state. This is a simple feature that, independent of all the other systems here, would add flavor to the game, where long-standing tribes of barbarians that manage to stay intact for long enough begin to settle and try to become civilized to preserve their power and as a result of their interactions with their surroundings. The type of city-state wouldn't be random of course, but rather, have to do with that encampment's surroundings and what is available to it.
But first, a bit of expansion on city-states. I feel they should be given a bit more variety in what they offer. Primarily, this involves new types of city-states, and there are four I immediately think of: Scientific, Industrial, Diplomatic, and Financial. The latter two may be a little off-balance, but the first two I feel are basic additions. Scientific would, obviously, give you boosts to Science from being friends and allies, though by how much depends on what would be most balanced. For Ancient era, I imagine a +3 Science for Friends, and +6 for allies would work out best. Industrial provides boosts to Production, and works similarly to Maritime city-states: being Friends with them gives you +2 or +3 production solely in the capital, while being Allied increases that by 1 in every city. Diplomatic is a tricky one, because it might become rapidly broken, but simply, it is a city-state that helps provide small amounts of Influence to others, and sway in the World Congress. +5 Influence to other CSs for Friends, and 1 additional Delegate for being allied, alongside maybe an additional +5 Influence. And Financial is a simple matter of providing GPT, though I worry with this because it could somewhat undermine the prospect of giving gifts of gold if they just give it right back to you.
As Religious CSs give you Faith for meeting them, I feel like other types should do similar things.
To that end, Barbarian encampments have certain conditions they must fill to become a city-state, which of these they do determines what type they form into.
Now, all of those have that 100-turn thing as something of a phase. Likely, by 100 turns, if it is still an encampment, it has none of those properties. In that case, instead of a city-state, the camp turns into a barbarian city, using the unused city list for them. These basically are encampments that are harder to take over, but they qualify as actual cities, just ones unable to engage in diplomacy and are always hostile. If you can take it over, then you can acquire that city for itself, though the prospect of it not having become a city-state means it's probably not that good of a city. These barbarian cities can pump out units even faster, and can put captured citizens to work, build buildings and expand their territory further. If they do manage to expand into resources, they will enter into conditions similar to the encampment phase, and will become a city-state if they fulfill the same conditions in this new status. Barbarian encampments would likely be changed to where they can't produce units requiring strategic resources, but barbarian cities could do that once they expand to the required strategics. This might be altered to make that 100 turn limit toned down to 75 but still make the conditions for becoming a city-state on a 100-turn scale, so that potentially, a barbarian city with few resources and lands would remain barbaric until it grows to utilize sufficient resources or pillages the appropriate amount in that timespan. Of course, making barbarians work properly entails separating them by encampment, meaning they could very well engage in tribal warfare, and two barbarian cities may very well try and conquer each other. This would be indicated by title rather than colors, and it'd probably be hard to tell what occured at a glance at the map...but then, hasn't it been that way for civilizations over time? Always viewing those lesser countries as the same, even if the lands they view as one are in fact vastly different to each other. ^.^
Now, barbarian cities are one thing- if they never fulfill their conditions, they will never progress beyond a barbarian city. They will always be at war, never be available for trade routes, not be able to engage in proper diplomacy, and so on. However, if they do become a city-state, that is certainly not the end of the line. Instead of just staying static, city-states will try and expand their territory, but do so in a more limited fashion, only getting settlers once they amass the research to enter a new era, putting a hard limit on the cities one individual state could possess. Functionally, they will still pretty much be city-states even with multiple cities, however, at certain points, they may appeal to the World Congress for guidance on whether or not they should form a full-blown Nation. Nations are basically beefier CSs, providing far more bonuses for being allied, being able to send trade routes, generating Great People, constructing National Wonders (not World Wonders though), getting their own delegates in the WC, adopting Ideologies, coming up with trade proposals, and so on and so forth. They will be allowed to create Settlers at will instead of being limited by eras, and unlike a CS status, their bonuses will increase for each city they own. Functionally, they will be much like full-blown civs, only they will still have the same influence mechanics and still send out quests. They probably won't be eligible to win the game though, as they won't be able to build the Apollo or Manhattan Projects or be eligible for becoming the Host of the WC or the World Leader, or get Tourism from Great Works. They could MAYBE get Domination, but given they don't have many military bonuses and are likely to start off smaller than proper civs, it is unlikely. It could happen for militaristic Nations, especially if they have a nice late-game UU like, say, the Foreign Legion (yes, they can still gift those) or so.
Of course, that is just if the City-State founded is the likes of Kiev or La Venta or Zurich (incidentally, city-states that are multiple per country would likely become part of a Nation city list - Zurich and Geneva would probably be just a part of a new CS of Berne founding the nation of Switzerland, while Quebec City and Vancouver would be under a new Ottawa's nation of Canada, and so on and so on. Incidentally, yes, if a CS becomes a Nation, its formal name will change from, say, Vatican City, to the Papal States, or Kuala Lumpur will become Malaysia. Don't know what to do about the likes of Cahokia or Wittenberg which don't have proper countries attached, or Monaco or Singapore which don't have more than one city of their actual territory, maybe their city list will be neighborhoods or so. But ANYWAY, these are not the only city-states that can be founded. Every so often, instead of the usual, a barbarian encampment will become a city-state named as the capital of an existing civ that isn't present, like Athens or Jakarta or Paris. They will go through the exact same progress as any other city-state, sending quests, being humble and whatnot. In fact I might as well give the list of what capitals would be what type of city-state so here.
Main difference, though, is that, instead of founding a super-city-state-ish Nation like others, they will appeal to the World Congress to join as a full-blown member civilization, and will establish itself on the map as such with colors and everything! They will have every capability any other civ would have, be capable of winning the game, everything. A civilization that didn't exist in any form until 1120 AD could very well end up being the first into space. And they will greatly reward those who vote for them in the World Congress, giving them a supercharged version of their previous CS bonus as long as they stay friends. It certainly leaves the player with a choice: allow the potentially devastating Assyria to make its debut on the map in exchange for loads of science per turn, or shut down its appeal to keep it as a humble city-state...at least, presuming they don't come for you should their appeal pass anyway...
Of course, this has the potential to work in reverse: a civilization has the potential to become a city-state, or even multiple city-states if their empire is large enough. This is most likely to occur when extreme unhappiness occurs or if there's a severe threat of being completely dominated. There's several options for this: you can let some of your own cities go as a way to alleviate happiness problems or provide something of a buffer state between an encroaching army, or they can leave of their own accord if their local unhappiness is too high, which will be exacerbated if that city is separated from your empire or not established with city connections. This is especially likely to happen if a capital is lost, whereupon the existing country fragments from its loss of connection, and your new capital is totally separated from them. If situations are particularly bad, then those cities may go right ahead and turn on you, inciting a rebellion, declaring their independence, and allying themselves with encroaching invaders to save their own skins. There's even the possibility of these city-states banding together and appealing to create a new civilization fashioned out of the old: a big chunk of American cities separated from the capital and in a vulnerable position could revolt, appeal to the WC to recognize them as a new civilization, and found the Confederate States of America centered around Boston or something silly like that.
Indeed, city-states banding together to form a new nation is an entirely likely possibility, as they'll decide amongst themselves to unify their lands and form a greater nation more likely to establish itself in the World Congress. The probability of this occuring is increased if their lands are connected, they have the same ally, are of the same type, or even have the same architectural style or so (though that would be a lower factor just for sanity's sake). Buenos Aires and Sofia could decide that they can't achieve their goals alone, and unify to create a mightier nation of Argentina-Bulgaria that will establish itself as stronger than the two separated. This could occur if both are just city-states, or already full nations, or even if one is just starting up and one has several cities. If Buenos Aires is a small fry in a big scary world, they could seek out contact with the long-established lands of Bulgaria and ask for their protection, even fully integrating themselves if possible. They could even merge their bonuses into the combined nation: while Argentina would give culture and Bulgaria military units, Argentina-Bulgaria would provide both, in ratios depending on how many cities belong to each member. In our scenario, allying with A-B would give you frequent military units but only a little bit of culture, while, if it were reversed with Sofia being the newcomer, you'd get loads of culture with the occasional military unit. This would likely have to be balanced, with the easiest way being the CS bonus for advancing an era being lessened or eliminated, and their alliance bonus being more based on how many cities they have than what era it is (and, incidentally, as previously mentioned they'd get a settler for each era they advance to, making that balance out nicely if you've kept a CS ally all game).
For this to continue in relevance later on in the game, it could be adjusted so that, once a civilization hits the Industrial or Modern era where most of the world is explored, barbarian encampments would no longer need to be in the fog of war to spawn, and could very well appear right outside your borders, providing there is the appropriate land. This would largely be relevant to aspiring peoples seeing their opportunities fading to create lands of their own, and the people living in those unclaimed tiles deciding those lands belong to them and not to the encroaching superpowers. This could even be expanded to where, once the era after that hits, barbarians skip the encampment phase entirely and found cities right there on the spot, making it take a more concerted effort if you want to claim those tiles you haven't yet gotten to. At this point, the requirements for becoming a city-state would drop, requiring a base 50, even base 25 if it's into the Information era by then, and even those scrap bits of useless unclaimed land would be declared the independent territory of tiny nations defiant of how 95% of that island they've set up on is owned by the current military leader.
The point of this is to add more diversity into the map as time goes on, and make it less like every single country is founded from the start and more like how things actually go, where scattered people begin to organize and create their own kingdoms out of the dust, and potentially becoming new staples on the map, or becoming a long-forgotten tribe absorbed into those big superpowers trying to spread themselves like some fearsome b-movie blob monster. And maybe try to avoid the map seeming so uniform by the end, and more colorful and diverse, like the actual world is, where immense empires rarely stay intact and often fragment or collapse once a crisis hits, or loses lands to neglect and internal strife rather than outright conquest. Sure, it's complicated, but I rather like the image of it - the world map evolving and changing with the times, the major axes of power stirring about instead of being stationary to the initial capitals founded back in 4000 BC. I mean, looking back to the 20th century, not a single one of the big three superpowers that shaped the times so well had roots in prehistoric times. America was settled barely a half millennium ago, declared its independence in half that time, and only really came into great power in half of THAT time. Germany was, for most of time, some vague cloud of tribes to the Romans that hardly coalesced into a single unity, but rather being shifted about by lesser tribes and kingdoms almost constantly. And Russia, even though it's the oldest of the three, wasn't around back in the time of Mesopotamia in the slightest, and was largely nomadic people and decent but not super powerful kingdoms until...the late Renaissance, I believe? where it established itself as a true empire and grew massively into its own. With a more changing political map, a game will be more flavorful and unpredictable and more evocative of the changing tides of history, where a player could have their massive empire, have it blasted down by unions of organized former barbarians, be constrained and desperately clawing at power for centuries to come, and unite their former territories later on, emerging into greater powers like what they once had. It has certainly happened. Look at Rome, after all, absolutely crushed after a thousand years of prosperity, spending much time as a powerful, but small city-state, and rising up again as the powerful Italian empire, playing great hands in the expansion of the Axis powers, which came closer to conquering the world than many others before. It would make each game a more unique story, where how the game starts is no certain indication of how it will end, and that, I feel, would infuse much life into it.
/ramble
I've proposed this system in various places, but I thought I might as well outline the whole thing here. Basically, this is a concept whereupon city-states, an evolution of them in nations, and full-blown civilizations emerge over time, instead of all being founded at once.
The most basic system of this revolves around barbarian encampments having certain conditions that they reach in order for them to become a city-state. This is a simple feature that, independent of all the other systems here, would add flavor to the game, where long-standing tribes of barbarians that manage to stay intact for long enough begin to settle and try to become civilized to preserve their power and as a result of their interactions with their surroundings. The type of city-state wouldn't be random of course, but rather, have to do with that encampment's surroundings and what is available to it.
But first, a bit of expansion on city-states. I feel they should be given a bit more variety in what they offer. Primarily, this involves new types of city-states, and there are four I immediately think of: Scientific, Industrial, Diplomatic, and Financial. The latter two may be a little off-balance, but the first two I feel are basic additions. Scientific would, obviously, give you boosts to Science from being friends and allies, though by how much depends on what would be most balanced. For Ancient era, I imagine a +3 Science for Friends, and +6 for allies would work out best. Industrial provides boosts to Production, and works similarly to Maritime city-states: being Friends with them gives you +2 or +3 production solely in the capital, while being Allied increases that by 1 in every city. Diplomatic is a tricky one, because it might become rapidly broken, but simply, it is a city-state that helps provide small amounts of Influence to others, and sway in the World Congress. +5 Influence to other CSs for Friends, and 1 additional Delegate for being allied, alongside maybe an additional +5 Influence. And Financial is a simple matter of providing GPT, though I worry with this because it could somewhat undermine the prospect of giving gifts of gold if they just give it right back to you.
As Religious CSs give you Faith for meeting them, I feel like other types should do similar things.
Spoiler :
Food to capital's next population point, +50% if met first
Culture boost, 16 if met first
Golden Age, 60 if met first
Production boost to capital's current project, +20% if met first
Science boost to current tech research, +50% if met first
Influence boost to all known city-states, +10 if met first
Gold boost, +60 if met first (meaning 45/90 in total)To that end, Barbarian encampments have certain conditions they must fill to become a city-state, which of these they do determines what type they form into.
Spoiler :
Now, all of those have that 100-turn thing as something of a phase. Likely, by 100 turns, if it is still an encampment, it has none of those properties. In that case, instead of a city-state, the camp turns into a barbarian city, using the unused city list for them. These basically are encampments that are harder to take over, but they qualify as actual cities, just ones unable to engage in diplomacy and are always hostile. If you can take it over, then you can acquire that city for itself, though the prospect of it not having become a city-state means it's probably not that good of a city. These barbarian cities can pump out units even faster, and can put captured citizens to work, build buildings and expand their territory further. If they do manage to expand into resources, they will enter into conditions similar to the encampment phase, and will become a city-state if they fulfill the same conditions in this new status. Barbarian encampments would likely be changed to where they can't produce units requiring strategic resources, but barbarian cities could do that once they expand to the required strategics. This might be altered to make that 100 turn limit toned down to 75 but still make the conditions for becoming a city-state on a 100-turn scale, so that potentially, a barbarian city with few resources and lands would remain barbaric until it grows to utilize sufficient resources or pillages the appropriate amount in that timespan. Of course, making barbarians work properly entails separating them by encampment, meaning they could very well engage in tribal warfare, and two barbarian cities may very well try and conquer each other. This would be indicated by title rather than colors, and it'd probably be hard to tell what occured at a glance at the map...but then, hasn't it been that way for civilizations over time? Always viewing those lesser countries as the same, even if the lands they view as one are in fact vastly different to each other. ^.^
Now, barbarian cities are one thing- if they never fulfill their conditions, they will never progress beyond a barbarian city. They will always be at war, never be available for trade routes, not be able to engage in proper diplomacy, and so on. However, if they do become a city-state, that is certainly not the end of the line. Instead of just staying static, city-states will try and expand their territory, but do so in a more limited fashion, only getting settlers once they amass the research to enter a new era, putting a hard limit on the cities one individual state could possess. Functionally, they will still pretty much be city-states even with multiple cities, however, at certain points, they may appeal to the World Congress for guidance on whether or not they should form a full-blown Nation. Nations are basically beefier CSs, providing far more bonuses for being allied, being able to send trade routes, generating Great People, constructing National Wonders (not World Wonders though), getting their own delegates in the WC, adopting Ideologies, coming up with trade proposals, and so on and so forth. They will be allowed to create Settlers at will instead of being limited by eras, and unlike a CS status, their bonuses will increase for each city they own. Functionally, they will be much like full-blown civs, only they will still have the same influence mechanics and still send out quests. They probably won't be eligible to win the game though, as they won't be able to build the Apollo or Manhattan Projects or be eligible for becoming the Host of the WC or the World Leader, or get Tourism from Great Works. They could MAYBE get Domination, but given they don't have many military bonuses and are likely to start off smaller than proper civs, it is unlikely. It could happen for militaristic Nations, especially if they have a nice late-game UU like, say, the Foreign Legion (yes, they can still gift those) or so.
Of course, that is just if the City-State founded is the likes of Kiev or La Venta or Zurich (incidentally, city-states that are multiple per country would likely become part of a Nation city list - Zurich and Geneva would probably be just a part of a new CS of Berne founding the nation of Switzerland, while Quebec City and Vancouver would be under a new Ottawa's nation of Canada, and so on and so on. Incidentally, yes, if a CS becomes a Nation, its formal name will change from, say, Vatican City, to the Papal States, or Kuala Lumpur will become Malaysia. Don't know what to do about the likes of Cahokia or Wittenberg which don't have proper countries attached, or Monaco or Singapore which don't have more than one city of their actual territory, maybe their city list will be neighborhoods or so. But ANYWAY, these are not the only city-states that can be founded. Every so often, instead of the usual, a barbarian encampment will become a city-state named as the capital of an existing civ that isn't present, like Athens or Jakarta or Paris. They will go through the exact same progress as any other city-state, sending quests, being humble and whatnot. In fact I might as well give the list of what capitals would be what type of city-state so here.
Spoiler :
Main difference, though, is that, instead of founding a super-city-state-ish Nation like others, they will appeal to the World Congress to join as a full-blown member civilization, and will establish itself on the map as such with colors and everything! They will have every capability any other civ would have, be capable of winning the game, everything. A civilization that didn't exist in any form until 1120 AD could very well end up being the first into space. And they will greatly reward those who vote for them in the World Congress, giving them a supercharged version of their previous CS bonus as long as they stay friends. It certainly leaves the player with a choice: allow the potentially devastating Assyria to make its debut on the map in exchange for loads of science per turn, or shut down its appeal to keep it as a humble city-state...at least, presuming they don't come for you should their appeal pass anyway...
Of course, this has the potential to work in reverse: a civilization has the potential to become a city-state, or even multiple city-states if their empire is large enough. This is most likely to occur when extreme unhappiness occurs or if there's a severe threat of being completely dominated. There's several options for this: you can let some of your own cities go as a way to alleviate happiness problems or provide something of a buffer state between an encroaching army, or they can leave of their own accord if their local unhappiness is too high, which will be exacerbated if that city is separated from your empire or not established with city connections. This is especially likely to happen if a capital is lost, whereupon the existing country fragments from its loss of connection, and your new capital is totally separated from them. If situations are particularly bad, then those cities may go right ahead and turn on you, inciting a rebellion, declaring their independence, and allying themselves with encroaching invaders to save their own skins. There's even the possibility of these city-states banding together and appealing to create a new civilization fashioned out of the old: a big chunk of American cities separated from the capital and in a vulnerable position could revolt, appeal to the WC to recognize them as a new civilization, and found the Confederate States of America centered around Boston or something silly like that.
Indeed, city-states banding together to form a new nation is an entirely likely possibility, as they'll decide amongst themselves to unify their lands and form a greater nation more likely to establish itself in the World Congress. The probability of this occuring is increased if their lands are connected, they have the same ally, are of the same type, or even have the same architectural style or so (though that would be a lower factor just for sanity's sake). Buenos Aires and Sofia could decide that they can't achieve their goals alone, and unify to create a mightier nation of Argentina-Bulgaria that will establish itself as stronger than the two separated. This could occur if both are just city-states, or already full nations, or even if one is just starting up and one has several cities. If Buenos Aires is a small fry in a big scary world, they could seek out contact with the long-established lands of Bulgaria and ask for their protection, even fully integrating themselves if possible. They could even merge their bonuses into the combined nation: while Argentina would give culture and Bulgaria military units, Argentina-Bulgaria would provide both, in ratios depending on how many cities belong to each member. In our scenario, allying with A-B would give you frequent military units but only a little bit of culture, while, if it were reversed with Sofia being the newcomer, you'd get loads of culture with the occasional military unit. This would likely have to be balanced, with the easiest way being the CS bonus for advancing an era being lessened or eliminated, and their alliance bonus being more based on how many cities they have than what era it is (and, incidentally, as previously mentioned they'd get a settler for each era they advance to, making that balance out nicely if you've kept a CS ally all game).
For this to continue in relevance later on in the game, it could be adjusted so that, once a civilization hits the Industrial or Modern era where most of the world is explored, barbarian encampments would no longer need to be in the fog of war to spawn, and could very well appear right outside your borders, providing there is the appropriate land. This would largely be relevant to aspiring peoples seeing their opportunities fading to create lands of their own, and the people living in those unclaimed tiles deciding those lands belong to them and not to the encroaching superpowers. This could even be expanded to where, once the era after that hits, barbarians skip the encampment phase entirely and found cities right there on the spot, making it take a more concerted effort if you want to claim those tiles you haven't yet gotten to. At this point, the requirements for becoming a city-state would drop, requiring a base 50, even base 25 if it's into the Information era by then, and even those scrap bits of useless unclaimed land would be declared the independent territory of tiny nations defiant of how 95% of that island they've set up on is owned by the current military leader.
The point of this is to add more diversity into the map as time goes on, and make it less like every single country is founded from the start and more like how things actually go, where scattered people begin to organize and create their own kingdoms out of the dust, and potentially becoming new staples on the map, or becoming a long-forgotten tribe absorbed into those big superpowers trying to spread themselves like some fearsome b-movie blob monster. And maybe try to avoid the map seeming so uniform by the end, and more colorful and diverse, like the actual world is, where immense empires rarely stay intact and often fragment or collapse once a crisis hits, or loses lands to neglect and internal strife rather than outright conquest. Sure, it's complicated, but I rather like the image of it - the world map evolving and changing with the times, the major axes of power stirring about instead of being stationary to the initial capitals founded back in 4000 BC. I mean, looking back to the 20th century, not a single one of the big three superpowers that shaped the times so well had roots in prehistoric times. America was settled barely a half millennium ago, declared its independence in half that time, and only really came into great power in half of THAT time. Germany was, for most of time, some vague cloud of tribes to the Romans that hardly coalesced into a single unity, but rather being shifted about by lesser tribes and kingdoms almost constantly. And Russia, even though it's the oldest of the three, wasn't around back in the time of Mesopotamia in the slightest, and was largely nomadic people and decent but not super powerful kingdoms until...the late Renaissance, I believe? where it established itself as a true empire and grew massively into its own. With a more changing political map, a game will be more flavorful and unpredictable and more evocative of the changing tides of history, where a player could have their massive empire, have it blasted down by unions of organized former barbarians, be constrained and desperately clawing at power for centuries to come, and unite their former territories later on, emerging into greater powers like what they once had. It has certainly happened. Look at Rome, after all, absolutely crushed after a thousand years of prosperity, spending much time as a powerful, but small city-state, and rising up again as the powerful Italian empire, playing great hands in the expansion of the Axis powers, which came closer to conquering the world than many others before. It would make each game a more unique story, where how the game starts is no certain indication of how it will end, and that, I feel, would infuse much life into it.
/ramble
