Let's design our ideal remake of civ! Programmer will work for pixel art!

Some people find Civ's economic system very unsatisfying and there have been some very detailed proposed alternative models. Most notably, Wimsey's economic model and Tradeperor's Unified Economic Theory. Such a drastic change would basically amount to a new game.

I have a friend who has been working on a Ceasar-style city-building game. It's almost complete but he needs more artwork to finish it off. He's willing to contribute the beginnings of a civ-like game in exchange for artwork for his city-building game. The required artwork would be simple pixel art (see the spoiler below for the existing artwork).


I could contribute some artwork myself (I did nearly all the existing artwork) but I wouldn't want to do it all, and I'd only want to bother if other people are enthusiastic about designing a new civ game with a better economic system.

If other people are interested, I imagine the agenda looking something like this:

1. Decide on what, roughly, a bare-essentials-but-still-enjoyable civlike economics-focused game would look like.
2. Decide on what we would need from Mr Programmer
3. Do the artwork to get as much as we can
4. Find volunteer programmers to finish off the job OR
5. If that doesn't work, use kickstarter.com to raise funds to pay Mr Programmer to create the bare-essentials game (he would be willing work for much less than industry rates, so it would be easy to raise enough money if enough people were interested)

Anyone interested in doing some artwork? Anyone just interested in this proposed project generally?

I have one idea.

In the city screen, you tell the city how it should distribute its , much in the way the espionage screen lets you distribute spy points. Whole only, though, not fractions.

As a sector becomes more developed, its effects improve, but its maintenance costs (in ) grow.

For each sector you can distribute to, there is a gauge illustrating its status. A yellow segment shows how developed it is, while a green segment shows how much it will grow next turn. If there is no green segment, that means the going toward the sector equal the maintenance cost. If it is not getting enough to meet its cost, then next turn the sector will degrade by an amount indicated by a red segment.

To illustrate with an example: When you settle your first city, you have two sectors to distribute to:

• Military - Your city automatically churns out military units, and this sector determines how fast it does this.
• Settlement - Your city will train settlers at a rate determined by this sector.

As you discover new techs, more sectors become available to you (or less expensive to maintain), such as:

• Fortification - Your city's defense bonus is determined by this.
• Law - Determines how well the city can keep corruption under control (if we want to bring this back.)
• Religion - Develop this to make your religion more influential and increase its spread rate. Also improves the chance of a Great Prophet being born.
• Economy - The market sector. As it develops, the city's generation rate increases. Also improves the chance of a Great Merchant being born.
• Research - Libraries, Observatories, Universities. Develop this to increase output. Also improves the chance of a Great Scientist being born.
• Culture - Entertainment in general. Develop this to increase your output. Also improves the chance of a Great Artist being born.

This idea, by the way, completely replaces the building queue, Workers, and specialist distribution.