Development of My Own Civilization

General_CFR

Warlord
Joined
Oct 8, 2006
Messages
125
Location
Kirovograd, Ukraine
I entered indie gamedev in 2010 with a dream to make my own turn-based global strategy. Since then I released 25 games, which won 10 awards at various contests. Among them were turn-based strategies for example, CardsWars, a combination of cards and risk. I posted it here.

Now I feel ready for a bigger TBS, which will reflect the expansion of your nation over centuries.

I think, mobile devices lack these type of games now. My personal best are a series of EasyPlay (but they are more Risk, than Civ) and "Musket Smoke" (this is an ingenious game, but it's a wargame).

The news of Civilization VI release expedited my progress and I'm going to release my game before 21st of October.

Here's how it looks like now:





Game features

Focus your attention on really strategic issues. No need to issue orders to every warrior or a worker. Actually, there will be no individual units. Everything: see superiority, recon missions, building, wars are defined by numbers and formulas. They are defined by the primary directions, which are set by you.

Flexible technology tree. Your technological advance will be defined by what your people are doing and its environment Coastal nations will sooner advance in seafaring, while the steppes dwellers will be likely to become a major land conquering power. This will be more interesting than "Let's learn alphabet to open a way to catapults"

Achieve your aim using hard- and soft-power. You can influence your neighbours, get them into your alliance, establish a puppet government or initiate a rebellion in their provinces.

Even if your country is captured, you can stay in the game as a rebellion leader. Gather enough resistance points to revolt and declare independence!

And if you expanded too much, neglecting other development sides, get ready to fight the separatism at your empire's suburbs.

As you progress you'll see the chapters from the future history textbooks telling about your glorious deeds and giving slight hints on your future development.

New civilizations will appear in the unoccupied territories during the game. They will receive a bonus for quicker expansion.

Map generator creates realistically looking planet with continents, archipelagos with climatic zones, rives, highlands.

Unique names for the map objects and countries are generated.

Game will be available both for mobile and desktop

Now working at:
Well-working system of relations between the nations and between the provinces inside one nation.
 
What's made:
Coded map informers (their art to be made later)
When you expand your empire you first found colonies. You take 25% of their resources, but they have a chance to revolt. To avoid the rebellion you'll need to use your soft and hard power.

 
Colonies now can revolt! (The unrest points are gained from the resources you took as a tribute to the metro). Now need to balance carefully revolt and revolt-prevention activities
 
This Saturday I can share an animated gif of my own turn-base strategy gameplay.



Here you see as I start, improve terrain, explore territory. Then I found a colony. I begin spending my soft-power points to keep the colony controlled and avoid it declaring independence.

Later you can notice how the colony's border colour is changed and its own flag appears on the city icon.

As the colony becomes an independent country, it gains an ability to found own colonies.

For the debug purposes I show the current projects of all the nations on the map (even in the fog of war). In the actual version you'll see only your projects and those ones which interact with you: propaganda, war, etc

I need to adjust gameplay coefficients to balanse the process of empire growth/collapse.

Within next week I'll do this, integrate convenient controls and informers to make the game ready for the pre-alpha test.
 
I've played it for a short time, I will play some more later on.
There's some English translations missing still... which makes it a bit hard to understand what's happening sometimes.
 
Hi General CFR.
That is a very, very interesting video and I really like your take on the game. Well done and well thought out. Keep it up, I can't wait to try the next version!
 
Thank you!
Whoa, new forums design! Looking cool!

So, the new version of the Civilizations Builder is ready. The soft-power influence model was elaborated and implemented. Now you can separate a rival country into parts by inspiring a rebellion in it. Or you can involve an enemy into your sphere of influence. The AI can do the same,ans as you've became a computer's satellite you have to rebel quickly to avoid being annexed.



(Late phase of the game: so many countries want the city of Monad to become their colony. But the idea of keep the things as they are (STABLE) has the most of the supporters for now)

Other changes:
- New strategic commands interface
- City interface improved
- New resource: "Migration" is generated from the overpopulation in the cities. It's spent to founding new colonies.
- You can set the number of enemies at the start of the game.
- Next turn on Space

Versions for Android, Windows and Web

More about Ideas

Political processes of the civilization are defined by the ideas, supported by the citizens. Those, who control the ideas will control the world's destiny. You can spread the ideas in your and foreign cities by using your diplomatic influence and rule.

How do ideas work

Every turn some of the current ideas supporters get bored of this idea and they give up. Then the countries, which have influence over the current city, for new supporters (of those citizens who don't currently support any idea). And, finally, the supporters of the strongest idea, spread it among the neutral citizens.

When the support of one of the ideas exceeds 50% the political situation of the country or a city is changed.

What ideas you can spread

Being happy of the current situation. By default this idea is set in your own cities.

Joining your country completely. You can spread it in your satellite's capital (the the country will be annexed by you completely) or in its cities, to annex it gradually.

Including the country into you sphere of influence. You can spread this idea in the capital of an independent state. If you succeed it will become your colony (satellite).

Rebellion. You can spread it in the cities of your rivals to make them break apart. Or, if you became a colony of another country, you can start supporting the rebellion idea in your capital, to set you free.

Please, note:

to propagate the ideas in your cities you'll spend Rule (generated by obelisks and barracks). and to propagate them in the foreign cities you'll spend soft power (generated by temples and diplomatic academies).

You are welcome to test the game and share your impression in comments.
 
I just gave it quick try ~30 mins... and I totally like the idea!

It takes some effort to figure out how to play... but that might be just me.

I know it's early version, but just few comments:
-Maybe speed up the progress of the game a bit. It feels like it's mostly pressing "next turn" at repeat at the beginning.
-If possible, allow bigger window size for desktop version
-I'd prefer using real historical names for nations and cities...so, maybe you could add modding support later when game is released?

But I really see lot of potential in this game. I'm more excited of this than civ6.

I'll test it more later, good work!
 
Thank you very much! I keep working to improve the game and I 100% agree with your points (especially with the one that it's it's more exciting than civ6 :))

Currently going to optimize the player's micromanagement tasks even more and will try some other influence spreading models (ideally - so that the player would be able to estimate the idea spreading outcome, seeing the numbers on the screen). And will make some adjustments for players convenience.
 
Hi ya,

Tried out the game on my mobile this morning and it seems like it will become very interesting, I look forward to seeing the science mechanic at work.

Some feedback:

The information text at the top and bottom is very thin, sometimes the letters become partially invisible where they are so thin.

Perhaps a second banner at the top would be helpful to more clearly see your productivity values, as with some tiles on the map (colours) it becomes difficult to read sometimes.

Instead of having all of the actions on the side of the screen (not in itself a bad idea) have a context/tile specific 'wheel' type interface when you click a tile.
What I found myself doing was everytime I expanded to a new square I had to click through all of the build options to first check which were available, then go back and decide which was best before finally applying it to the square.
If I could just tap a square and see the relevant options it would cut out those extra steps.
Same for diplo on cities, I had to go through to check which option was the relevant one for a given cities situation.

The numbers on the action buttons were helpful in figuring out what 'resource' applied to what action, but it was also just doubling the display of your production info. Perhaps an alternative would be to colour code the production info text so that it matches the action colours.
Green for Sentry, Orange for Power, etc. if this was combined with the above 'wheel' concept then those visible action buttons could be colour coded as well.

Also after playing for a few minutes my phone started to get very hot.. (it's a samsung galaxy (I forget the model))

I also found it a little cofusing with the city influence mechanics, and how they were winning/failing against each other. I think it is Power(domestic) Vs Diplo(Foreign) but sometimes I seemed to be winning despite the other person seeming to have a higher value. (I think you have already mentioned working on this part though).

The 'settings' screen was a bit of a pain in that if I clicked the wrong button (The back arrow I think) I seemed to lose my game, an 'are you sure' would be nice as I kept clicking the wrong one. It would also carry over the previous games production stats into the new game until I clicked the first turn.

I like how your civ does tasks automatically if you forget to assign the points (like exploration).

The food improvements seemed a bit strange value wise (though I get there is probably more to come with this) but hunting camps were the cheapest thing despite giving the most points.

Other than that, It was a very interesting premise, and I look forward to seeing how it fleshes out with the other features.
 
Thank you! Great idea of the wheel interface, I'll definitely do something like that. I have another wild thought right now, to let the city inhabitants build farms and other food-supplying buildings by themselves, and leave to the player only the building which increase the rule and (in the future) military power.

I updated the game, now you can scroll the map horizontally unlimitedly. And the map sizes are up to 200x200. I've made several optimisations, so, it's interesting how will your mobile device handle the.

Also you have a button now "Make several moves until something happens"

Now thinking of a better ideas spreading formula.
 
that button is a good addition, I often found myself 'over turning' tapping the button too many times waiting for something to change/finish. Another idea might be something like a flashing (or highlighted) indicator to say 'something has finished here/build list is empty'. So that a player knows that there is a choice to be made at this location or under this resource type.

The only thing I would say about the auto-building is to have a demolish ability, incase your people build a farm where you want to put your new 'whatever'.

In general there is no reason why not though, as you would mostly put food on food tiles, and put other types anywhere the farms can't go.

It might only become an issue when/if you add a larger roster of infrastructure.
 
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