Future Direction of the Mod

I don't think restrictions like this will be welcome. The more restrictive it gets, the less fun it is.

I agree, I'd rather encourage close settlement as a viable strategy instead of making the alternative completely impossible.

Tigranes said:

I said this before, but I think it's worth to repeat it again.

Think about Rise and Fall. So many mods, so many civ series and expansions. And they all have all the civs starting together. Then comes Rhye and introduces concept of dynamic rise and fall. This concept alone (I don't even talk about stability) -- so evident in real history -- was overlooked both by professional developers and hundreds of modders with brilliant programming skills. It even gave RFC its name.

Now, which revolutionary new feature would give DoC its name if we don't pick random "Dawn of Civilization" name? Which fundamental part of historical reality became DoC's landmark? Dare I say none?

How about creating some fundamentally new experience instead of building on top of the existing features? Here is just one example:

There were 2 fundamentally different types of civilizations in history: nomadic and sedentary. Sons of Cain and Sons of Abel. This fact is not a secondary feature, it is a fundamental piece of historical reality like religion, like wars, like culture, like science. Ignoring this reality in the game called Civilization is like ignoring females in the game called Humans.

Civilization series have engine that revolves around sedentary civilization only, only Sons of Cain are present. Barbarians suppose to represent nomads, but they too become city dwellers early in vanila game. The only time I saw something close to represent Nomads as they are -- was Mongols scenario in Warlords: I am talking about Mongol Tent unit.

That is a good starting point. Imagine playing civilization with mobile "cities". Just a new object that can move. Call it horde. Horde has population points, which can work tiles in BFC. It can build regular units and animals instead of buildings. Animals like horses or sheep act like mobile improvements on tiles they are parked on. Horde does not generate money. You have to move your animals into cultural border of sedentary (regular) civ to cash them. You can also pillage and capture cities which will act like puppets in Civ5: AI manages them for you and creates units and tributes for you. You can always raze them. You can also cash the culture of the city you have captured. Techs are not researchable. You discover them from huts, buy them from others, or occasionally capture them in wars.

Something along these lines. I hope you got an idea.

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I thought something like this a long time back, but I think this mod is already close to reaching maximum complexity before only small fixes and addons can be added.

I think it's best both for Leoreth and the fanbase if Leoreth is clear where he's taking the mod and make a final release. He's clearly a talented modder, has gained a lot of experience in DoC; and I'm sure everyone would like to see a mod of his own (just please not another fantasy one).

I want to chime in with, I love this mod, but I feel that changes should be limited to where strictly necessary. And for closer city settling, wouldn't it be so much more viable if cities had alternate ways to gain food- such as through trade routes? Because historically, cities did not make all the food they ate, they traded for it.

Tigranes said:

I said this before, but I think it's worth to repeat it again.

Think about Rise and Fall. So many mods, so many civ series and expansions. And they all have all the civs starting together. Then comes Rhye and introduces concept of dynamic rise and fall. This concept alone (I don't even talk about stability) -- so evident in real history -- was overlooked both by professional developers and hundreds of modders with brilliant programming skills. It even gave RFC its name.

Now, which revolutionary new feature would give DoC its name if we don't pick random "Dawn of Civilization" name? Which fundamental part of historical reality became DoC's landmark? Dare I say none?

How about creating some fundamentally new experience instead of building on top of the existing features? Here is just one example:

There were 2 fundamentally different types of civilizations in history: nomadic and sedentary. Sons of Cain and Sons of Abel. This fact is not a secondary feature, it is a fundamental piece of historical reality like religion, like wars, like culture, like science. Ignoring this reality in the game called Civilization is like ignoring females in the game called Humans.

Civilization series have engine that revolves around sedentary civilization only, only Sons of Cain are present. Barbarians suppose to represent nomads, but they too become city dwellers early in vanila game. The only time I saw something close to represent Nomads as they are -- was Mongols scenario in Warlords: I am talking about Mongol Tent unit.

That is a good starting point. Imagine playing civilization with mobile "cities". Just a new object that can move. Call it horde. Horde has population points, which can work tiles in BFC. It can build regular units and animals instead of buildings. Animals like horses or sheep act like mobile improvements on tiles they are parked on. Horde does not generate money. You have to move your animals into cultural border of sedentary (regular) civ to cash them. You can also pillage and capture cities which will act like puppets in Civ5: AI manages them for you and creates units and tributes for you. You can always raze them. You can also cash the culture of the city you have captured. Techs are not researchable. You discover them from huts, buy them from others, or occasionally capture them in wars.

Something along these lines. I hope you got an idea.

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Here's a suggestion for the mechanics of a nomadic civilization:

Taking Mongol as a test case, let's say they start out with a certain number of 'tents' (or perhaps we should call them 'Yurts'). Such units would function like explorers (it can only move and defend, not attack), but they would represent a single population point. Each tent/yurt would consume a certain amount of food (perhaps .5 for generic 'Tents,' .25 for Mongolian UU 'Yurts'), which means that while units can stack, they can only stack so many per tile. If the total population of a tile consumes more food than that tile produces, subtract half the excess population (rounding up) at the beginning of the following turn.

Each population point on a tile would generate and , depending on the quality of the tile; but at a certain threshold, a bigger population on a tile would generate a bigger bonus (perhaps +50% and at population 4). Workers can improve the quality of the land, which improves its output as well as increasing the size of the population that can subsist on that tile. Alternately, we could use a specialist economic model -- each population point would serve as a particular function, with corresponding bonuses unrelated to tile production.

Finally, each tile would also have two countdown clocks. Each turn, a single point would be taken away from both clocks for each population point on that tile (if there is no population on that tile, the counter resets). When the first counter reaches 0, a new yurt unit is created. When the other counter reaches 0, a city is founded on that tile, its starting population determined by the number of yurts in the 3x3 square around it (perhaps 1-to-1 up to 5 population, then .5 population points for every yurt thereafter). This second counter should be twice or three times the first one, so that you can safely generate two or even three yurts without having to worry about getting a city.

Given that most/all nomadic civilizations did eventually become sedentary, this provides a mechanism for that conversion (besides conquest). It also provides a mechanism for ensuring a Mongolian military machine, without simply giving them extra 'stacks of keshik doom' via coded-in worldbuilder whenever our historical simulation demands it. Once you reach grassland, each tile could support up to four yurts, with corresponding unit production (as yurts can't build buildings). It'd be easy for a dedicated force to attack and destroy a yurt, but most civilizations could not ensure that sort of military mobilization, so the core of yurts would remain solid. To ensure that the nomadic presence does not last into the modern age, yurts could be made obsolete at a certain point, or certain population-related bonuses could be reduced by new techs or civics -- thus ensuring that after a certain point, it would make more sense for the player or AI to start developing a city-based empire instead.

need my speed said:

I don't want to turn this into some kind of Caveman to Cosmos mod. Not a dozen new eras, hundreds of new technologies, and a thousand new units and buildings.

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My Words! The "more the better - attetude" of caveman2cosmus isnt the right way.
It is a horror...

Monaldinio said:

My Words! The "more the better - attetude" of caveman2cosmus isnt the right way.
It is a horror...

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The problem is that there are some people who want just more of everything. More civs, more techs (this one might be necessary for the modern era), more units (they need to be redone, not added to), more wonders, more everything.

Leoreth said:

I agree, I'd rather encourage close settlement as a viable strategy instead of making the alternative completely impossible.

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The only way to encourage non-optimal play is via incentive that produces an equivalent result to the leading strat.
One of the defining advantages of supercities is the powerful production rate, which would lead me to think that clustered cities need some kind of comparable advantage to remain competitive.
In my mind, this would work out to something like:

Clustered cities that share a BFC together get a multiplier chain bonus if they are all synchronized in producing the same thing;
i.e. Greek city-states produce Hoplites at a 1.1x or 1.2x faster rate if they're all producing Hoplites at the same time or a civ enjoying a tax bonus if they're all running Wealth simultaneously.

mrrandomplayer said:

The problem is that there are some people who want just more of everything. More civs, more techs (this one might be necessary for the modern era), more units (they need to be redone, not added to), more wonders, more everything.

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Like me

VGL said:

Like me

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You don't get what I'm saying...

I get what you're saying. you're saying that some people want more everything

VGL said:

I get what you're saying. you're saying that some people want more everything

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I'm implying that some people just seem to want another Caveman 2 Cosmos, which I think would ruin the mod. I think that we should look at systems to change to make the game more balanced and historical instead of just saying "MOAR EVERYTINGS make DoC better! Let's add 20 new civs, 10 new religions, 50 new techs, and 100 new units/buildings. That will fix everything."

I feel like that mindset is rampant here. Instead of looking at what systems we should change and improve (spawning mechanics, culture, decolonization, etc), it seems like a lot of suggestions are just "MOAR stuffs". There are plenty of examples on this subforum.

I like to improve the mechanics and events and make new mechanics first,then other stuff.But no new units (well,except one or two) and a information era or more modern era techs is very necessary

VGL said:

I like to improve the mechanics and events and make new mechanics first,then other stuff.But no new units (well,except one or two) and a information era or more modern era techs is very necessary

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I guess I feel like the only BTS things that need to be changed are
1. The culture system, because it is incompatible with DoC and always was.
2. The unit tree, because the pacing is incompatible with DoC and always has been. That would only consist of small changes, though.
3. The tech tree somewhat, but only to slow down the modern era a bit. The tech tree is largely fine, but costs in the modern era should be increased and maybe one or two techs could be added, like "Archaeology".

I guess I just feel like that we are focusing too much on adding new stuff and not on improving mechanics desperately in need of improvement (spawning, culture, etc).

Agreed.and a decolonization like the one you suggested

mrrandomplayer said:

I guess I feel like the only BTS things that need to be changed are
1. The culture system, because it is incompatible with DoC and always was.
2. The unit tree, because the pacing is incompatible with DoC and always has been. That would only consist of small changes, though.
3. The tech tree somewhat, but only to slow down the modern era a bit. The tech tree is largely fine, but costs in the modern era should be increased and maybe one or two techs could be added, like "Archaeology".

I guess I just feel like that we are focusing too much on adding new stuff and not on improving mechanics desperately in need of improvement (spawning, culture, etc).

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With units I think there was a talk of spacing out the transition from Riflemen to Infantry and Machine guns, which I think is needed especially when Britain just beelines the techs to make those by 1800-1840, so as America you're in trouble.

I like the idea of Unique Religious Powers and Unique Ideological Victory (1 goal per civic, there will be 6 of these so they should be easier than UHV and URVs)

All other changes, IMHO, should be added new civs, techs, units, etc, or balancing.

Shadow Merc said:

With units I think there was a talk of spacing out the transition from Riflemen to Infantry and Machine guns, which I think is needed especially when Britain just beelines the techs to make those by 1800-1840, so as America you're in trouble.

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Hey, France had cavaleries in early 1600s in my Congo game, and Arabia researched Steel also around that time in my Iran game.

I felt the old BtS corporations, for all their faults, encouraged smaller city sizes, because the bonuses were independent of city size and a matter of resources, and maintenance costs were less for a smaller city. I wish there was a mechanic like that with the current corporations.