Here is an idea for how Culture in the game can take on a new more dynamic role.
Have religion be the biggest factor in determining the culture of the Civilization.
Instead of having Eras have different religious or other beliefs of whatever kind put into the technology tree, once that technology is researched that culture has the option to choose to adopt it for his or her Civilization much like how governments works and in a way a new era starts
I would of said Race should play a factor as well, but every Civilization is pretty much different in racial stock than one another so there isnt much point in that
Different Cultures to choose from could be as follows: early beliefs, such as the worship of air, wind fire etc than moving on to lets say sun worship, a barbarian one (human sacrifice etc), then onwards to Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Christianity, Islam and others
Placement of these beliefs in the technology tree can be based on the actual time in history...
Of course each belief system or rather culture would have its own unique architecture, so your cities would look different, maybe your advisors as well..
I think this would work, I mean cities change in the game right now, instead of it happening with new eras have it happen when a new culture is adopted furthermore put some positive attributes to these new belief-religious technologies like improving moral of the people etc and once adopted for a certain period of time make it almost impossible to change hard to get people to convert their beliefs this system is especially effective when conquering a civilization with the same culture - their people would be easily assimilated versus ones that werent and as for culture flipping, taking over cities with the same culture could be made to less likely flip
I am not sure how difficult this concept would be to implement in the game, but I think it would be worth it
Have religion be the biggest factor in determining the culture of the Civilization.
Instead of having Eras have different religious or other beliefs of whatever kind put into the technology tree, once that technology is researched that culture has the option to choose to adopt it for his or her Civilization much like how governments works and in a way a new era starts
I would of said Race should play a factor as well, but every Civilization is pretty much different in racial stock than one another so there isnt much point in that
Different Cultures to choose from could be as follows: early beliefs, such as the worship of air, wind fire etc than moving on to lets say sun worship, a barbarian one (human sacrifice etc), then onwards to Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Christianity, Islam and others
Placement of these beliefs in the technology tree can be based on the actual time in history...
Of course each belief system or rather culture would have its own unique architecture, so your cities would look different, maybe your advisors as well..
I think this would work, I mean cities change in the game right now, instead of it happening with new eras have it happen when a new culture is adopted furthermore put some positive attributes to these new belief-religious technologies like improving moral of the people etc and once adopted for a certain period of time make it almost impossible to change hard to get people to convert their beliefs this system is especially effective when conquering a civilization with the same culture - their people would be easily assimilated versus ones that werent and as for culture flipping, taking over cities with the same culture could be made to less likely flip
I am not sure how difficult this concept would be to implement in the game, but I think it would be worth it
I once had a city that had been Roman for 5,000 years flip to me. Absurd. Never has anything like that ever happened in reality.
