Addressing Generic Civs - thoughts?

[Wyz_sub10]

As mentioned in some other threads, civs are pretty generic in CivIV (I suppose they've always been somewhat generic).

Anyway, in an attempt to give civs more unique character I wondered if anyone supported a mod with changes to add some elements to make them more distinctive.

Some thoughts:

- two unique units per civ instead of one
- each civ has one wonder that they alone can build
- reassign Great people to be civ-specific
- re-introduce great military and social leaders (why did these go away?)


Any other suggestions?

[mitsho]

the problem with the two unique units and the unique national wonders is that you need to have a certain amount of effects that make them unique and are still balanced, and do not lead to uselessness of something else for the civ (so, centering the map is no option for example for a wonder). That might get really quick tedious, especially as there are going to be more and more civs, so the problem gets bigger and bigger as time goes on. (Besides, you also have to produce the graphics...).
Military leaders on the other hand are a nice touch, the effects are clear: Get a military tech, build a War academy (As I haven't got the game yet, I won't comment on the effect// long-term effect) or give a unit some experience points (promotions// short-time effect) or Golden Age. But how do they get spawned? They are somehow different, does it still make sense for them to get produced as the other Leaders historically and game-play wise? Probably yes, but that makes building stronger again, correct?
Then, I don't know what you mean with social leaders? Care to explain (with effects)?

mitsho

[jbfballrb]

probably science leaders(?, unless its a reference to pre-civ3). you could make a Military Great Person, maybe some wonders would contribute to that. the army would be its unique thing. i dunno what the specialist would do...make everyone happy. then youd want to code in the Army aspect of it...

[Fintilgin]

I think one big thing you could do to make Civs feel a bit more unique is add back in different building styles for the different civilizations. I.E. Arabic and Egyptian houses look different from Chinese or European. A few more 'cultural' units would be good too. Asian swordsmen or workers would have the same stats as a European one, but just look a little different.

[Loppan Torkel]

Favored religion perhaps?! Instead of letting the one who gets to the religionfounding tech first found the religion, there could be a chance of founding it - 66% if it's favored, 33% if it's not.

There could be culturegroup units, religious units, combined culturegroupANDreligion units, and civANDreligion units, to make for example the English templars something special to get.

[SoCalian]

Flavour units/second UU and unique building/city graphics are the biggest way to make civs more unique looking. for the national wonder idea, you could have each wonder do pretty much the samething, but in diferent ways. I'm thinking something like: Americans build Hoover Dam, Hoover Dam put a hydro plant in every city on the continent. Something like that could work. you would just change the wonder and the improvement it adds with each civ. this way it is making the civ more unique, and is flexible enough to acomadate any number of civs.