First I would like to note that I'm not native English speaker and I usually play Civ games in my language (French), so I'll do my best but I may not use the correct term on specific actions in the game. You'll excuse me, I hope.
In order to improve the historical and scientific accuracy of the mod, I'd like to talk a little about the different levels of taming and domestication and their consequences IRL and in the game.
If animals can individually be tame (for most species at least), really few of them have really been domesticated, and to various degrees only.
I recommend reading Wikipedia's page on domestication for a complete analysis, but in short:
- we consider it full domestication when these populations are bred and raised under human control for many generations and are substantially altered as a group in appearance or behavior.
- some animals remain identical to their wild counter part and are simply farmed and ranched.
- some remains mainly feral and are captured in the wild and tame afterward.
Depending on the animal, each of those population may be trained and used (for work, war ...) or simply be eaten, or for specific purpose, but the availability and the cost depends heavily on the domestication status.
As an example I'll take the differences between elephants, who are normally simply taken from the wild and trained, and the horses who are domesticated (even the "wild" horses we have now are usually descendants of a domesticated population returned to the wild).
As such if there are trainers for both, horses can be found anywhere, have a wide range of variety, including war horses, and can be trained easily. Some empty space may be necessary but if you provide them with food, you can raise horses anywhere including big cities.
Gameplay-wise it means that if a camp could provide the first wild horses, it should be easy to either create horse ranches either on the map or directly in the cities (but it should consume food). Domestication of horses should open specializations for horses with opportunities to grow species which bring more food, more hammers, more money, more health, more spy, or more powerful units.
Now on the elephants: as they are taken from the wild, raising them has no cost, but if elephants can be moved after their capture, their initial territory has to remain at least partially wild. Raising elephants the way horses were raised would cost a lot, due both to their size and their destructive nature. This leads to a limited availability of elephants, and a behavior and appearance similar to the wild ones.
Gameplay-wise the elephants should only be available with a camp (and maybe a trainer), and no ranches should exist. Camp could provide both elephants and ivory (or two different type of camps could exist) and elephant resource could then be trained as units, for a higher cost than horse. Number of units/buildings based on elephants should be limited as elephants are only trained within their natural limits with no evolution. An elephant uprising should be possible wherever elephants are in use (camps or troops or buildings).
In an alternative reality we could perfectly imagine that the complete domestication of the elephants could occur but this would necessitate the building of elephants farms where the best ones would be selected and bred. This would cost a huge amount of food and take a long time to complete.
The current situation does not reflect those differences enough, and gives in my opinion, a good advantage to start close to elephants compared to a start close to horses, when historically horses have played a leading role compared to any other animal.
In order to improve the historical and scientific accuracy of the mod, I'd like to talk a little about the different levels of taming and domestication and their consequences IRL and in the game.
If animals can individually be tame (for most species at least), really few of them have really been domesticated, and to various degrees only.
I recommend reading Wikipedia's page on domestication for a complete analysis, but in short:
- we consider it full domestication when these populations are bred and raised under human control for many generations and are substantially altered as a group in appearance or behavior.
- some animals remain identical to their wild counter part and are simply farmed and ranched.
- some remains mainly feral and are captured in the wild and tame afterward.
Depending on the animal, each of those population may be trained and used (for work, war ...) or simply be eaten, or for specific purpose, but the availability and the cost depends heavily on the domestication status.
As an example I'll take the differences between elephants, who are normally simply taken from the wild and trained, and the horses who are domesticated (even the "wild" horses we have now are usually descendants of a domesticated population returned to the wild).
As such if there are trainers for both, horses can be found anywhere, have a wide range of variety, including war horses, and can be trained easily. Some empty space may be necessary but if you provide them with food, you can raise horses anywhere including big cities.
Gameplay-wise it means that if a camp could provide the first wild horses, it should be easy to either create horse ranches either on the map or directly in the cities (but it should consume food). Domestication of horses should open specializations for horses with opportunities to grow species which bring more food, more hammers, more money, more health, more spy, or more powerful units.
Now on the elephants: as they are taken from the wild, raising them has no cost, but if elephants can be moved after their capture, their initial territory has to remain at least partially wild. Raising elephants the way horses were raised would cost a lot, due both to their size and their destructive nature. This leads to a limited availability of elephants, and a behavior and appearance similar to the wild ones.
Gameplay-wise the elephants should only be available with a camp (and maybe a trainer), and no ranches should exist. Camp could provide both elephants and ivory (or two different type of camps could exist) and elephant resource could then be trained as units, for a higher cost than horse. Number of units/buildings based on elephants should be limited as elephants are only trained within their natural limits with no evolution. An elephant uprising should be possible wherever elephants are in use (camps or troops or buildings).
In an alternative reality we could perfectly imagine that the complete domestication of the elephants could occur but this would necessitate the building of elephants farms where the best ones would be selected and bred. This would cost a huge amount of food and take a long time to complete.
The current situation does not reflect those differences enough, and gives in my opinion, a good advantage to start close to elephants compared to a start close to horses, when historically horses have played a leading role compared to any other animal.
), then horse/llama worker, then water buffalo/camel, then elephant, then mammoth. Is this right? With the military units the relative combat strength would compensate for the extra costs, what would compensate for the costs of the workers?
)
. in modern times, they are more likely to consume 
, add 
and a lot of Pollution. Therefore perhaps more :happy: and more 
(and probably 
). we can modify all of these, health, happyness, gold and properties, with techs. So this would be quite a good example.
)
