An idea for terrain specific civilizations

[nick0515]

It's always bothered me immensely that you select a civilization and then on a random map you can start off in any terrain and it may completely miss-match your culture, eg. Scandinavia in the desert.

I've had an idea but it has many downsides and potential problems. I'd like to put out some of the ideas for discussion and I have some questions other modders may be able to answer.



Here's the basic idea:

There are certain resources (luxury or strategic) attached to certain terrain types.

There are certain wonders for each culture group and each of these terrain specific resources that require that resource to build and it must be within the city radius and also requires the palace.

This wonder places a building in all cities you have.

This building is required for many culture specific buildings that produce most or all units (I know at least one must be buildable).

All civs are generic and not based on real civilizations, made up names etc. The idea is a historical simulation rather than playing out real history.

Example:

You choose Asian Civ 1. You start off in plains with a plains specific resource within range of your settler. You start a city and build the Wonder Asian Civ Plains which puts a building called Asian Civ Plains City in all you cities. This building allows you to build a barracks which auto-produces an Asian Plains Warrior unit every 10 turns. Etc etc...



So your units would be all flavour units that create the feeling of a certain culture appropriate to the terrain type.

Eg. an Egyptian like Civ could exist on flood plains, Viking-like civs near mountains and coastlines, Germanic-like civs in forests etc etc.

Now there are many flaws in this idea and I may not have explained it very well. Please ask questions and offer solutions to problems you for see if you can.

Some big problems are:

1. You may not start off near any particular resource and therefore have no resource, no wonder, no buildings and no units.

EDIT: After some testing can't really find a way to make sure you start off near a resource even with only a few terrain types allowing cities and setting all strategic/luxury resources to only those terrains.

2. What would happen if the city were taken by another civ?



Some questions:


1. Can settlers still start off (ie. start location generated) in a terrain type on a random map that doesn't allow cities to be built there?

EDIT: Just tested this a bit. By making all terrain except one type not settleable, the random maps with 60% water put all starting locations on that one terrain type, with 80% water it put most cities on that one terrain type but some on other types, presumably to avoid too many cities too close together. So in short it does affect where starting locations go but it overrides this if it needs place cities not too close together.


2. What do you think? Totally unworkable?


EDIT: In light of the problem with no resources being in the first city's radius, civilizations could have an initial generic line of units and once they settle near enough to a terrain specific resource then the wonder can be built in that city thereby starting the process of having flavour units and buildings based on terrain.

 

[Gojira54]

I've actually played around with a very similar concept quite a bit over the years.

You can do quite a bit with premade maps to solve this problem, but if your goal is random maps it gets quite tricksy.

What I've ended up with is this - A given civ (or culture group, which limits you to 5) starts of with a parent tech that at some point will unlock a terrain specific resource, which in turn will allow you to unlock improvements\wonders\units. Since that resource is specific to that civ, so will be the resulting dependent items.

As far as I know, aside from marking aquatic civs as seafaring, there is no way to specify that a civ will start on or near a specific terrain. All you can do is guide them to it. I do this by also allowing a number of unique bonus resources on that civs desired terrain, with limited success. You still might start far away from your terrain.

As you pointed out, you don't want everything to be terrain dependent, or your civ will be gelded. Have a basic tree, with a terrain specific line of units and improvements.

If your city is taken by another civ, they cannot build any net new of YOUR terrain dependant items, but they will keep the buildings you already build, and IIRC that includes any unit-generating properties that building has.

You can still be Norway in the Mojave and do OK, but both the AI and the Human player will want to relocate to the cold ASAP.

Not sure that helps?

 

[Gojira54]

I forgot to mention, I also give the units within a terrain based civ the ability to ignore movement costs in said terrain.

I also tend to have some air based civs, who get none of the terrain benefits but get earlier and better air units.

 

[_ghost_]

if the unit generating improvements need a resource to be build and the civ that controls the city with that improvement has not that ressource. then the improvement won't generate units at all

 

[Gojira54]

Good to know, I hadn't taken this that far down the line...

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

I think this is a cool idea, Nick, especially for random map games. You could even try some different culture groups outside of the normal line of thinking. For example, one culture group might be 'Nomadic', and could have camel archers, etc. if they are by the desert or horse archers if they are in the plains. If you are using improvements to autoproduce units, they could use the 'replace improvement' flag so that you can't just make every type in all cities when you connect varied resources. Or maybe a culture group could be something like "Americas", where jungles could give you access to Mesoamerican stuff or tundra could give you access to Inuit stuff and so on.

One big issue is the Civ names and leaderheads, since you're stuck with those before you even see the map.

 

[Gojira54]

I've used the Culture Groups for this before, I had 1 each for aquatic, aerial, rugged (hills/mountains/volcanoes), wooded (forest/jungle/marsh), and flatlanders (desert/tundra/grasslands/plains). The problem is the flatlanders have the most space, and are equally at home in temperate, hot, and cold climates. You can break them up by removing aerial and aquatic groups, but then you have civs that specialize in just tundra and just desert - hard to find terrain.

It is hard to find the right balance of 5 terrain groups.

You could balance this out if you go by civ though, by doing the following
Aerial - 1 civ
Aquatic - 1 civ
Mountains - 1 civ
Hills - 2 civs
Marsh & Floodplains - 1 civ
Desert - 1 civ
Forest - 2 civs
Jungle -1 civ
Grasslands - 2 civs
Plains - 2 civs
Tundra - 1 civ

... or something similar, allowing only a single Great Wonder per terrain type, this way the civs having the more unusual terrain like desert or tundra would have no competition, the challenge lies jhust in getting that resource, whereas the Grasslands Civs would have to race to get it and build the GW before the other Grassland Civs...

 

[nick0515]

Just a quick note to say a big thanks to all those who have commented. I've been so busy that I haven't had time to comment further or do any more testing this idea, but I plan to return to it as soon as I have more free time. then I'll re-read the comments and go from there.

 

[gja102]

Some good ideas here. I have always thought that Civ should feel more like a historical similation, and that the Civs should be shaped by their surroundings, and not the other way around.

I remember being appalled when CivIII introduced civ-specific abilities, over the more generic CivII games - it just led to historically ludicrous situations, like a landlocked England having the best ships, or a Mongol civ strung out along an island chain inexplicably having the best horse archers. Generic civs that are shaped by their terrain would definitely be a lot more immersive.

Years ago I modded my copy of vanilla CivIII, so that all the unique units were assigned a particular resource, e.g. wines gave you Legionaries and Hoplites, ivory gave you war elephants and Impis, etc. It was cool to see the different continents having different army compositions.

My first thoughts:

- Use the 3 billion year map types, they do make more homogeneous terrains, e.g. larger deserts etc.
- Linking the units to luxury resources is a good idea as the luxuries will ‘clump’ in certain areas, resulting in clear geographical differences between the areas (whereas the game is careful to spread strategic resources evenly, it actively tries to localize the luxuries)
- The reliance on auto-producing buildings would be difficult to use for the whole unit roster (and as you rightly say, a resource-free capital would kill you). Personally, I would limit auto-production to a few unique units, and have the bulk of the unit roster linked to specific resources, acting as ‘ upgrades’ to the basic units. E.g.: if you have iron, you can build a basic generic swordsman unit (that is pretty weak). However, if you have iron and a flood plains luxury, you can build Immortals instead (the logic being, your flood plains give you more money / men for a better army).

I've used the Culture Groups for this before, I had 1 each for aquatic, aerial, rugged (hills/mountains/volcanoes), wooded (forest/jungle/marsh), and flatlanders (desert/tundra/grasslands/plains).

In the end, I think this idea is different from the OP, in that you are still pre-determining each civ before they even start? When the idea should be, if you start in the arctic, your civ will develop dramatically different than if it started in the desert?

 

[Gojira54]

In the end, I think this idea is different from the OP, in that you are still pre-determining each civ before they even start? When the idea should be, if you start in the arctic, your civ will develop dramatically different than if it started in the desert?

Well if that is the intention, it is much easier to do. Have terrain-specific Strategic Resources that allow specific abilities, ie improvements and units. But then any civ that gets there can build that...

I thought the intention here was to have something like Arabia excel at the desert, Norway excel in the Tundra, Nepal excel in the mountains, etc. I've had an idea in the back of my brain for years about civs that worship different gods, based on terrain and civ traits.

 

[nick0515]

Well if that is the intention, it is much easier to do. Have terrain-specific Strategic Resources that allow specific abilities, ie improvements and units. But then any civ that gets there can build that...

I thought the intention here was to have something like Arabia excel at the desert, Norway excel in the Tundra, Nepal excel in the mountains, etc. I've had an idea in the back of my brain for years about civs that worship different gods, based on terrain and civ traits.

yeah, I was hoping to achieve the former rather than the latter. The thing is I'm trying to get civs to develop as a homogenous culture, rather than having the situation where if you get multiple resources you end up having units and buildings from several different cultures at the same time.

 

[Gojira54]

That's what I initially thought.

Outside of a premade map or some kind of advanced editor I am unaware of, I think you will need to settle for a watered down version of it, where all civs are equal until they get that terrain they need, then they can excel. Only problem is you will have balance issues - some civs will be surrounded by their special terrain to start, others will be far away. But this still may be OK.

If you divide the terrain into 10 types, and give 3 civs to each type, and grant Great Wonders off those terrain types, that adds a bit more of a competitive element to the game.

I think we are thinking of advanced editor changes that simply are not possible with the one we have. Clearly the code exists to allow a civ to start near a specific terrain type - look at the Seafaring trait - but they did not give us the power to expand that

 

[gja102]

yeah, I was hoping to achieve the former rather than the latter. The thing is I'm trying to get civs to develop as a homogenous culture, rather than having the situation where if you get multiple resources you end up having units and buildings from several different cultures at the same time.

Oh, okay. I guess that, with this approach, Grasslands / Plains / Hills civs are always going to be okay, its the civs with more specialised, rarer terrain that risk starting well away from their homeland.

Maybe you could group Desert and Tundra into a 'Wilderness' civ that can thrive in both (but they are extremely unlikely to control both, due to geography, so they should stay homogenous).

 

[nick0515]

Woops, I got a bit confused in my last response. I actually meant to say that my original intention was more what gja102 said. I am trying to make it so you start off with as generic a civilization as possible and are then shaped by your surroundings.

Gojira, your ideas are interesting too though. That approach might be more realistic I suspect.

 

[nick0515]

This is what I'm trying at present:

Basically my original idea, but the resource doesn't have to be within city limits. So you might have to build 2 or 3 cities or use colonies before you can get your wonder to kick start what culture you develop. I'll set the 8 luxury resources to appear only on eight different terrain types. If you end up with more than one then you can choose. If you end up with none you'll probably have to start a new game. If the AI ends up with none they'll just get wiped out. I suspect most Civs will end up with one though. If you lose your capital you'll be able to build another wonder in the city that your palace moves to, assuming you still have at least one luxury resource. I've only done some very basic testing with this but I think it could work. I'll still have culture groups but all the cities for all five groups will be a generic set. The culture groups will be useful for having similar cultures start together, so Chinese-like civs will start near Mongol-like civs but NOT near Vikings etc. The question is going to be will it be fun to play or not. Also, given that it will rely on advanced auto-production I wonder if I'll run into problems with the max improvements limit.