Civ tech specifics, and Civ genesis

I don't THINK this is a repeat of an idea...I went through ybbor's thread as carefully I could to try and avoid repeating.

Anyway, my biggest problem with each of the Civs has been the limited way that the civ you choose effects your gameplay. Civ III expanded this area greatly, to be sure, but there is a lot more room for improvement.

I have a couple of ideas for this area that I'd like to share.

One: Why not have the Civ you choose, or at least the traits they have (if traits are to be preserved) effect what you can glean from an advance? There has been a bit of talk about this, in a way--some people have suggested that advances be tailored to the civ that discovers them. In other words, while the Romans would have a trireme, the Chinese would have a Junk...both with essentially the same stats, but with a different look and name. This is a good start, albeit with a few technical problems (if we continue the trend, we'd have to come up with new names back in time for civs like America, and forward in time for civs like Greece), but what I'm suggesting is more involved, and yet a bit more plausible. Basically, say the Romans and the Greeks both research iron working. The Romans would immediately pick up on the ability to use this new metal as a weapon, while the Greeks would immediately pick up on the ability to use this new metal to plow the land a lot more effectively. The Warriors gain better weapons, and the Farmers get more food.

This could even be tied in with several other ideas I've seen around the board, say with the concept of secondary advances. Perhaps depending on what sort of civ you are, you will automatically gain one or two secondary advances when you research a primary advance, but you can still research the others, it's just going to cost you.

My second idea is a bit more extreme, and I'm not even sure if I like it, but it may be food for thought.

Two: Perhaps, instead of having people select a civ to play as, the game could assign a civ to you after you play for a certain amount of time. Just like a Golden Age, declaration of civhood could be triggered by certain events, like building a certain Wonder, or just by building a certain amount of a city improvement. For example, if you settled a certain amount of cities in a very short period, you'd be labeled expansionist, and then if you built a certain amount of military units, you'd be labeled militaristic as well, so you'd become the Zulus. Perhaps the only way to become the Americans would be to start out as the English, then split off at the discovery of Democracy.

Like I said, I'm not sure I even like this idea...but it does interest me, and I think it's worth discussing at least.

Fromage10x said:

Two: Perhaps, instead of having people select a civ to play as, the game could assign a civ to you after you play for a certain amount of time.

Click to expand...

You can't have the AI choose a civ for you...most people (including me) have a stradegy for our best civs. If you randomize it, the stadegies will/might be usless.

But then again, it forces a player to adjust to different situations.

It should be an option to turn this on or off.


Moderator Action: I fixed your quote. All you have to do is edit it.

you could have just edited it

Well, it wouldn't be random. It would depend entirely on the way you play the game....basically matching how you play to the most appropriate civ.

That way let's say you start out in the desert and one of the possible civs has an advantage (inured, as has been coined elsewhere) in the desert. You would then, as a result of where you spawned and what you decide to build, end up as a civ that is tailored to you.

that could be a good aspect to Civ4 since it would give you an advantage since you setup a civ and then the civ you get would be more appriopiate to the empire that so far is constructed so that way most people won't end the game because the situation they were in was bad for the civ they were and want a better civ with different traits for that kind of situation. so basically i think it is a good idea but you should keep an on and off button for people who don't like that idea

Fromage10x said:

That way let's say you start out in the desert and one of the possible civs has an advantage (inured, as has been coined elsewhere) in the desert. You would then, as a result of where you spawned and what you decide to build, end up as a civ that is tailored to you.

Click to expand...

Never thought of it that way. But still, I wouldn't want to have this option on every single game. Again, it should be an option to turn it on/off.

Hi Big Cheese,

the idea of traits evolving crops up from time to time. I have been advocating serious reform of this part of the game for years and so have some others. (my most recent allusion - brief - is in the thread "Less Realism" - http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=86192&page=2&pp=40)

Your idea is a nice specific angle on the issue.

The most important change needed is to not know how a stranger will behave when you first come in contact simply because you can map their traits to their civ name.

Next most important point (and this is where your idea fits in so well) is that traits arrive out of circumstances (including climate and terrain as well as natural resources and neighbourly impacts) and they are not immutable in the time frame of this game.

There have also been debates about what precisely are the key traits of particular countries in history and I have argued that it is hardlty relevant and in any case they are very different at different times in history. The assigment of ci-specific traits based on someones evaluation of history is a false realism (i.e. a feature that, while in some sense realistic, is a consstraint on the primary objectives of the game or even contradictory to the underlying premises)

cheers

Algae