The Weakness of the Age of Discoveries

I`ve always thought that the Age of Discoveries is not very well explored in Civilization Series. Its normal that during the period the civs get the navigation tech to travel throw the oceans, all the continents are already occupied by civs that have a good development rate. I've never seen in civ games a real diferent rule for naval U.U. from the exploration era, neither units like the Conquistador for that purpose, since the navigation tech, except for military purposes, only serves for diplomatic contacts.

So, I ask if there is any map or scenario, or even a mod in the game that allow us to experience in a normal game (not a scenario), the taste of an exploration era and some use for the naval U.U. of that period. It would be nice to see navigation as a way to archieve new resources, explore undeveloped civs and even as a source for slaves and etc.

What do you think about that?

A good way to do this is just to use of the many 'new world' scripts, that is, where all major Civs start on one continent. Unfortunately the AI is pretty useless with intercontinental settling, but, hey, the AI is pretty useless full stop.

The Exploration policies and the Archaeologist dig sites will help a bit.

Last game I had with two continents, when I finally discovered the other continent, Germany had dominated the whole territory (leaving perhaps 2 city states and a small little portion of useless earth). I have decided to play as a Liberator, freeing all the obviously not-german cities, but it was nearly impossible; Germany was too strong. I managed to get one of its cities, but couldn't hold it long enough... The other civs in my continent, kept declaring war to him, but never did a thing. Aside from the occasional naval fight. It was far too troublesome and unnecessary to keep up with that, so I decided to ignore the whole new continent, and it worked. I kept playing as if I had a small pangea map and done, cultural victory!

Thing is, attempting to Dominate a second continent can sometimes be too troublesome, and unless you are trying for a domination victory, its almost unnecessary. Of course, new Diplo and Cultural victories might give you more reasons to interact with a New World, at least lets hope so...

Anyway, I think some things will improve:

• If trade routes are better between highly different civs, and if two continents were actually really different, that's a bit of a reason to start interaction with the newly discovered civs.
• Trade Routes most likely provide with a bit of cultural influence (tourism). So if you're playing a strong culture game, it will be a nice way of flipping some cities for your own.
• The World Congress is a nice reason to at least try to be the one to find all civs.
• Again, for culture games, digging up new archaelogical sites ("Woah, Mayans and Aztecs had a fight here! Nowhere in my continent will you find either themes") and collecting new themes, with the whole mix-matching minigame could also be a nice incentive.
• We don't know how exactly Culture Victory and Diplomatic Victory work now (some believe they may have been changed), hopefully the new victory conditions will require you proper interaction with the new continent.

Still, I'm afraid the improvements will not be that huge anyway. Something should happen at Globalization that can dynamize the whole having 2 continents... For now, I still prefer playing pangeas.

We know how the Cultural Victory works, In order to win you need to achieve 100% influence level by exerting enough Tourism to overcome the amount of overall Culture the rival civ have, once you conquer their culture you win Cultural Victory.

Pehamps the World Congress would motivate the search for other civs, but it won't motivate us to explore new lands, since by the moment we develop navigation, things like what Leugi told us about would probably happen. There's always, playing with continents, a civ that conquests an entire continent near the industrial era. You are frequently in the other continent. And there are no primitive continents, or empty or undeveloped ones. It seems everyone runs at the same speed.

It would be fun a mod that regulates the evolution of the civs diferently.
Or somethin in the game mechanics of BNW.

The Terra map script that the game offers is exactly what you are looking for. It is a random map with continents, where all civilizations start on the largest continent. So, when the Age of Discovery comes around, you actually have something to discover.

It's a pretty good map script and, personally, I wouldn't want to play the Spanish on any other one. One thing to keep in mind is that, with the default number of civs, the starting continent will be quite crampted and prone to early wars. You might want to start with fewer civs, or at least to be mindful of having a strong early army.

Also, the Polynesians are overpowered to the point of being a cheat on this map, in the hands of a human player. You are able to build a vast, unchallenged, overseas empire before anyone else earns the capability of crossing oceans.

Eru Ilúvatar;12367997 said:

So, I ask if there is any map or scenario, or even a mod in the game that allow us to experience in a normal game (not a scenario)

Click to expand...

That seems lie a bit of a contradiction there , anyway if you do want a scenario with exploration as its core then I think that the upcoming Scramble for Africa might be something for you. The interior of the continent is randomly picked so it's something new every time you play it.

Eru Ilúvatar;12370324 said:

Pehamps the World Congress would motivate the search for other civs, but it won't motivate us to explore new lands, since by the moment we develop navigation, things like what Leugi told us about would probably happen. There's always, playing with continents, a civ that conquests an entire continent near the industrial era. You are frequently in the other continent. And there are no primitive continents, or empty or undeveloped ones. It seems everyone runs at the same speed.

It would be fun a mod that regulates the evolution of the civs diferently.
Or somethin in the game mechanics of BNW.

Click to expand...

But you will still have archeological dig sites and if you have open borders if another civ, I am assuming you can dig on their territory.

One problem with archaeology as a solution is this:
If we play on a Terra map where all the cool civs are on one large continent, will there be any dig sites on the other continent? In other words, it'll encourage re-exploring old territory, but will you explore new territory?

Louis XXIV said:

One problem with archaeology as a solution is this:
If we play on a Terra map where all the cool civs are on one large continent, will there be any dig sites on the other continent? In other words, it'll encourage re-exploring old territory, but will you explore new territory?

Click to expand...

Probably not. Unless they made changes to City States where they're more aggressive towards Barbarians.

Yeah, that's my concern. That being said, they said the plan was to have them evenly distributed so it's possible that they'll allow some to randomly appear even if not tied to a specific event.

Louis XXIV said:

Yeah, that's my concern. That being said, they said the plan was to have them evenly distributed so it's possible that they'll allow some to randomly appear even if not tied to a specific event.

Click to expand...

It would be nice if old untouched Ancient Ruins would become Sites (seeing as those Ruins would rarely give anything worthwhile at that stage of the game).

In the real world, the European nations arrived to the New World with superior technology, crops and livestock (see Jared Diamond). The indigenous peoples of the New World were further weakened by Old World epidemics.

This allowed some European nations to colonize much of the New World.

In Civ terms, this could be simulated by a disparity of development between civilizations on different continents; as ocean travel becomes possible, the stronger civilizations could subjugate or destroy weaker civilizations overseas.

The only problem with that is, if you're the civ on the weaker continent, you'll hate the game and want to quit. Because of this, they try to allow a decent amount of tech progression even if you're isolated.

The real problem for exploration lies more in the map generation and general set up of Civ V. There's no incentive to go explore a new continent when one more population in one of your old cities is almost always better than one pop in a new city. Only when you can fix the set up so that it makes sense for the human player to explore you can adress the problem of why AI civ's are too slow for that. (If the AI were perfect, they wouldn't even explore and colonize when there are no logical reasons to do that).

I can see a few simple things to change that:

1) change luxury distribution so that some luxuries are only found on certain continents
2) change strategic ressources distribution so that later game ones are found more at the fringes.
3) make rewards for finding CS and Natural Wonders scale with Era (to a degree)
4) create (random) archaelogy dig sites on the unexplored continents
5) make exploration a quest for CS

The major and first one are better map scripts in my mind.

EDIT: I agree mirroring the real world wouldn't work as it runs against how the game is set up. Maybe allowing CS in unexplored continents to grow larger would go in that direction of historical simulation though?

I had to set up three small cities in out of the way locations because of aluminum and uranium. I also lack iron and horses, but with tons of flood plains as the dutch, I didnt have any trouble at the start of the game.

Definitely some good ideas here for encouraging exploration beyond your own land-mass. I definitely think we need some additional CS missions relating to Civs, Natural Wonders, trade routes and/or city-states across the ocean to encourage exploration even in regular map-scripts. Having luxuries and/or Mercantile Civ Luxuries that can *only* be found across the ocean will help too. Additionally, ramping up the hostility of both barbarians & City-States (especially Militaristic, Irrational & Hostile ones) should definitely lead to the creation of some intriguing Archaeological Sites-both in regular & Terra maps ;-). I also think that boosting output of undiscovered ruins to match your era would spark greater interest in trans-oceanic exploration. Here's hoping they do something about it!

Aussie.

mitsho said:

The real problem for exploration lies more in the map generation and general set up of Civ V. There's no incentive to go explore a new continent when one more population in one of your old cities is almost always better than one pop in a new city. Only when you can fix the set up so that it makes sense for the human player to explore you can adress the problem of why AI civ's are too slow for that. (If the AI were perfect, they wouldn't even explore and colonize when there are no logical reasons to do that).

I can see a few simple things to change that:

1) change luxury distribution so that some luxuries are only found on certain continents
2) change strategic ressources distribution so that later game ones are found more at the fringes.
3) make rewards for finding CS and Natural Wonders scale with Era (to a degree)
4) create (random) archaelogy dig sites on the unexplored continents
5) make exploration a quest for CS

The major and first one are better map scripts in my mind.

EDIT: I agree mirroring the real world wouldn't work as it runs against how the game is set up. Maybe allowing CS in unexplored continents to grow larger would go in that direction of historical simulation though?

Click to expand...

There's definitely reason to explore. I have seen and settled some gorgeous city sites (8+ resources) on uninhabited islands. There is going to be even more reason in BNW now that you can ship food and production to your new city via Trade Routes.

I love the concept of the Terra map, but I don't think it works without some kind of Colony mechanic, which I'm pretty sure we aren't getting in BNW.

The Colony mechanic in Civ IV was functional, but not very engaging... it's anti-climatic to found and build colonies, only to turn them over to the computer to play.