Genericized Civs

I have brought this up in my other topic but I think this deserves its own thread now that I want to start working on it.

The next big step in having a drastically different culture system is the phasing out of specific playable civilizations and leaders. One major problem that players have with the culture system now is that they pick a civ at the beginning of the game and expect to be able to play with that culture.

While not wrong its not entirely right either. I want to make the beginning of your game to allow the player to build up their own culture and shape it as you advance. Not be locked into a specific culture you picked in the beginning of the game.

This also will mean that when playing with Revolutions on a civ that splits off another civ will no longer have weird "Mayans from China" syndrome.

The easiest method to implement is the "genericized" color method. Each new playable civilization will be named after a color. Thus they will be called Red Empire or Blue Empire. With leaders called "Red Leader" or "Blue Leader". I am sure we could figure out a way to randomize the name of leaders to real leaders if we want but the point is to randomize them.

We could even name the leaders after Greek symbols like Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Omega, etc. Something to unlink them to specific civs.

Note that there will be as many civs as there are combos of leader traits. This way you can pick the exact leader trait combo you want. Then from there we will equally split up the Native Culture they start with. Such as African, Asian, American, European, Middle Eastern or Oceanian.

While colors will be linked to these they will not be on purpose. Such as if an Asian civ has the color of Red it has no real significance associated with it.

This method will also allow for unrestricted leaders choice to have more of an effect. Since it will not matter what color is linked to hat leader.

Lastly if the "dynamic traits" system is ever implemented than all you will be doing is choosing what starting traits you beginning the game with and can have even those change over the course of the game.

So now the first step is to find out how many civs we will need, give them color names and then make leader names.

Traits
- Aggressive
- Agricultural
- Charismatic
- Creative
- Deceiver
- Expansive
- Financial
- Humanitarian
- Imperialistic
- Industrious
- Nomad
- Organized
- Philosophical
- Protective
- Scientific
- Seafaring
- Spiritual

Since we're talking about traits as well (tho in a round about way) FFH & FFH2 have a bevy of new leader traits I think would be interesting game-play wise to adopt.

little_cyclone said:

Since we're talking about traits as well (tho in a round about way) FFH & FFH2 have a bevy of new leader traits I think would be interesting game-play wise to adopt.

Click to expand...

Could you provide a description of them and what they do?

I start off with a giant map, 50 Civs, and start as minor tribes. This has a nice 'let 'insert diety(dieties) of your choice sort them out feel'. I can't see any advantage of reducing it to bland colors. In fact, it will make things far, far more confusing for me as I'll end up with a wall of red attacked your and no clue what-so-ever which one it was.

Granted I currently have multiple Civs of the same country name pop up randomly (a red and blue America on different sides of my contient for one)... but unless your willing to name every available Civ color with easily differential color names this idea will make me have more issues with telling Civs appart then I have now.

Somehow being threatened by the Great Civs of Dreaded Perwinkle, Devious Cornflower and Arogant Puce will be nonsensical quickly... that is before you concider they'll have random gibberish leader names to boot.

So I vote heavily against this idea... or at least make it an option in start up. Though concidering that I can't actually name my own character in a custom game I'm not exactly thrilled with this idea. This way leads to gibbering under desks trying to remember which Civ just contacted you and if its the 30 city Juggernaut of Doom!!! or a one city civ with delusions of importance.

@Necratoid

Well if you have the leader names something like "Alpha of the Red Empire" you should be able to keep track of them. I am thinking of splitting them up like this ...

- African (Black, Grays and Purples)
- America (Reds and Pinks)
- Asian (Yellows and Golds)
- European (Blues)
- Middle Eastern (Greens)
- Oceania (Oranges and Browns)

Here is an example ...

American Civs
- Red
- Pink
- Ruby
- Crimson
- Carnation
- Magenta
- Fuchsia
- Mahogany
- Maroon
- Scarlet
- Cherry
- Strawberry

And so on.

Here is a chart of how many train combos are possible. This seems like a bit too much to make that many civs, however we could always give more than one leader to a civ.

I like the idea of starting without a named civilization and gaining that with cultures during the game. I'm not at all fond of the suggested naming system though. Wouldn't it be just as easy to start with only first names depending on what starting base culture a leader has? Shaka of some african, Peter of some european, Shawnee of some american, and so on. Of course enough names of each type to get around with having multiples of the same cultural start.

Though, speaking of initial culture, if we (well, ok, you) are taking it this far why not not start with a basic culture too? It's kinda weird to have african culture from start when starting in tundra/permafrost area, or have european and american culture empires start right beside each other on the same continent. Don't know if such initial culture buildings could be set by longitude/latitude and New/Old world for eligibility to build them? That way when an empire spans a huge area it can start picking up new cultures without needing to war to get them.
North/tropical/south and Old/New would mean 6 start base cultures. Might even need the right terrain to build them too, and could be the first of oh-so-many name changes.

Cheers

@BlueGenie

You have now proven my point. Once you assign specific names to them then you will immediately associate you civ with a culture. The way I want the culture system to work is based on how similar your game is to real life cultures. For instance if you start out near a desert and a flood plain with stone nearby then you can gain access to the Egyptian culture since the region is similar. Likewise if you say started in the Savanna near elephants then you will unlock Zulu culture (if you can build the wonder first).

The 6 native cultures are there for a few reasons ...

1. You still need to have a graphics flavor for the civs.
2. So not every civ can be taken by every other civ at the beginning of the game.
3. So assimilation feature still has a purpose.
4. So culturally linked starts still will work (ex. all civs with Native Asian culture start next to each other).
5. So same base culture civs will spawn off other same base culture civs with revolutions.

It's kinda weird to have african culture from start when starting in tundra/permafrost area

Click to expand...

There are some cold places in Africa if you go up in altitude, like Mount Kilimanjaro. But we assume that not all maps will be Earth-like either.

Hmm. I am thinking about this more. While not a terrible idea, I am wondering if its just a lot of work for not much pay off. While making everything generic would solve many confusions, it would probably do more harm than good and the current culture system can still work under either system.

Thanks for the feedback you guys. I am holding off on this idea for now.

When a leader doesn't have a recognisable name it does make trade and deplomacy difficult so we would need to do something about those screens as part of this.

On a side point here is a link to a link about changing leader names, it is by era and you still need the leaderheads.

The other option is to rewrite the whole way civilisations and leaders work.

Might I proffer my own suggestion, one which is somewhat of a compromise between total genericization and fixed-culture civ names. Namely (no pun intended) that the civs available at game start all possess the names of "progenitor" civs, civs that possess no known predecessors and typically have spawned off a wide variety of successors. The current list of candidates, though by no means complete (especially as far as Africa and the Americas are concerned), are the following;

Austronesians (who start with "Indonesian Culture")
Balangod (who start with "Ceylonese Culture")
Clovis (who start with "American Culture" [obviously, not the US one])
Han (who start with "Chinese Culture")
Indus (who start with "Indian Culture")
Jeulmun (who start with "Korean Culture")
Nubians (who start with "Nubian Culture")
Polynesians (who start with "Oceanian Culture")
Pre Jomon (who start with "Japanese Culture")
Proto Indo Europeans (who start with "European Culture")
Semites (who start with "Middle Eastern Culture")
Xiongnu (who start with "Mongol Culture")
Zayandeh (who start with "Persian Culture")

Obviously, this list is far from complete, and may need to be expanded or truncated if common ancestries for certain civs can be found or if further progentior civs can be discovered. The highly alien names are part of a different project/proposal of mine, which aims to dynamically alter civ names based on era (the civ name chosen being determined by whatever primary culture the civ has adopted). A largely-complete chart of such names can be found in this Google Document. Once further cultures are added, the chart may need expansion, but for now, it is largely complete.

In a similar vein, and as an expansion of the progenitor civ idea, I have come up with another chart depicting the cultural lineages and "tech tree" of the various cultures in-game thus far, with spreadsheet illustrations of links and even noting of certain cultures which I foresee requiring more exotic combinations (British+Maori producing New Zealand culture, for example). The document in question can be found here.

Lastly, and on the note of "Mayas from China syndrome", I would like to share a still WIP chart which aims to provide an entirely new approach to Revolutions; namely, that if possessing nothing but their parent civs culture, they do not split off into entirely new and culturally seperate civs, but split off into a civ which shares the iconography, art, language etc.. of their parent civ but possesses a different name and leader, both randomly picked from an extensive list. Thus, for instance, a breakway American civ may name itself Rhode Island and pick Wendell Wilkie as it's leader. Should both the parent culture and certain other cultures be present in the seceding city, that culture will be given priority, such as Babylon and Israel splitting from Sumer. This chart, which, again, is still a WIP, can be found here.

I hope these contributions can be of use, and look forward to hearing what the team here thinks of my ideas. Some of these are decidedly radical, and in my opinion would work better as game options (such as cultural tech trees), but others I can see going on to become core and original components of this mod.

@Praetyre when I click on your links I get a log on screen not the document. Does this mean I need to make an account to view your documents? I thought Hydro's are also in google documents and I can see them with no problems.

My apologies; I forgot to set the share permissions to allow the linked to view it. It's fixed now.

Edit: Nevermind

Now i am liking Praetyre's idea alot more, to "me" makes more sense. No Offense Hydro. But back in Prehistoric Era, there was really no name of civs and actually no real cultures, "at that time." But they gradually made "cultural" bearings a must to have, for the terrain they lived in or die. Then they gradually moved into different cultural areas, still not civs.

Now if "we" can get something like this started (alot of work) then in ancient time, they start naming the cultures by the civ name (Dynamic Civ Names) this would be a GREAT accomplishment for Civ4, IMHO, that is. And be closer to the real story line of Earth.(sort of)

Just brain storming is all

strategyonly said:

Now i am liking Praetyre's idea alot more, to "me" makes more sense. No Offense Hydro. But back in Prehistoric Era, there was really no name of civs and actually no real cultures, "at that time."

Click to expand...

I am not offened infact this is one of the ideas I brought up awhile back here. Which is based on johny smith and this Fabula Terra project. Which using ideas such as this ...



This is just 1 one like a hand full of ideas that were being floated around. The generic idea was on one extreme where all civs were generic and all in game culture was decided through buildings and resources. The other end of he spectrum was each civ in the old vanilla way and go even farther having their own tech trees and stuff.

Another method was having a ton of added playable civs and each progress over the course of the game into another civ much like revolutions. However this method is very content heavy.

Which is why I lean towards the "wonder civ method" already in place where wonders produce a civ resource which means a ton of cultures without it being so content heavy from a ton of new playable civs.

That's not to say that we should not still add some more playable civs, its just we should know which method we are doing before adding more. Personally I think we need more Oceania civs like Polynesians or Aborigines.

I think perhaps a hybrid method may be the best where different culture resources can be bit up upon each other and less dependent upon what resource or terrain is nearby. However such a project means a TON of wok and many more civs for all time periods.

For instance civics of the Americas have a lot of primitive civs while many of the European civs don't. This is only because more advanced civs came into the replace them and thus were forgotten while say the Native American ones were still primitive enough to either still be those civs or retained the history of them. Such as in the case of the Olmec, Toltec, Aztecs and Mayans.

i had a similar idea like this. what about making the old civs as they were but leave the culture system.after that create 3-5 custom civs with generalized names and let only those cultures have this culture system

I very much like the idea of a "civilization tree" as has been mentioned and as was shown in the image Hydromancerx posted.

In a mod of my own I'm working on, I'm using the following concept:

Tribe -> City-State -> Civilization

The player starts out as a tribe, which at first is an early people (such as Germans or Slavs). That tribe can settle a city (or rather, a village), which has no name yet, and the tribe can only have that one village. If that tribe has derivative tribes, depending on circumstances and chance, a popup can appear; it is structured in the following manner:

"The TRIBE_NAME culture is forming in your village. What will you do?"

Option A: "Embrace the new culture"

Option B: "They shall find their own way"

TRIBE_NAME would be the name of a derivative tribe.

If option A is chosen, then you become that tribe. Other possible derivative tribes for your original tribe are spawned where your village is, and they may search for a place to settle of their own.

If option B is chosen, that derivative tribe is spawned where your village is, and they may search for a place to settle.

If the derivative tribe in question is the last remaining of the ones available to your tribe, then you have to "embrace their culture".

A tribe should be able to abandon it's village, migrate and resettle elsewhere.

In this manner, we could have a tribal tree such as: Germans -> Istvaeones -> Batavians.

Eventually, as your tribe discovers technologies, you may transform your village into a city and found a city-state. The Batavians given in the previous example could for instance found the city-state of Amsterdam.

City-states wouldn't be able to settle new cities, and when you conquer a rival, they would become your vassal rather than being annexed.

Eventually, depending on circumstances, you could gain the possibility of having multiple cities, and when you did so, you could found a civilization. As an example, the city-state of Amsterdam could found the civilization of the Netherlands.

Tribes and City-States that remain as such after the player has become a Civilization would also function as "minor civilizations", like the Indian tribes of Colonization and Age of Empires III, or the City-States of Civilization V, providing the player with bonuses or units when befriended.

I like the wonder-civ thing we have going on in C2C right now; there just should be a lot more of them. My biggest want would honestly be to decouple the civ's starting region (oceana, europe, asia, etc) from the more specific cultures; if I start as Japan but end up in an area that would lead to my developing a more aztec-like culture, I should be able to do so.

If this isn't popular with most people, an option to enable it would work too.