Civilisation Design with Negative Bonuses

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Gaining culture through killing is quite edgelord or Robert E. Howard territory, and even quite disturbing as a notion. I would definitely say it did not work that way for the Aztecs or Spartans. The Spartans eschewed the trappings of high culture, and were always FAR below the other Greek polities in the matter, so obviously mass killing wasn't doing anything for them there (in fact, Athenians often rhetoircally portrayed them as,, "displined barbarians who somehow spoke Greek,"), and the Aztec cultural style was only something that spread, as it did, in the context of the Mesoamerican sphere - and, even then, it was more than just racking up body counts.

the civilization bonus was simple and intuitive to understand, was my only point. it wasn't a historical comment.

 

[Patine]

the civilization bonus was simple and intuitive to understand, was my only point. it wasn't a historical comment.

Perhaps what is sometines called a, "poorly-chosen example."

 

[Sostratus]

I am of the opinion that most civilization bonuses should be elegant.

That doesn’t necessarily mean simple, but I think a well designed ability has an aesthetic to it when written down. What I don’t like are when there’s so much going on that we end up with a wall of text.

Abilities like Free Imperial Cities, or Plato’s Republic, or Meiji Restoration - all very gracefully written. And these are incredible abilities.

Abilities like Taxis, Workshop of the World, and Mana are basically combo packs of several abilities stuffed into one. These are also very strong, but they have a ton going on.

I would strongly prefer that *most* civs in the game have abilities more like the first set. They are generally indivisible - not only do they have one core element, but they are bonuses that you can’t really tweak a number on. I don’t mind abilities like Mana, but only if they are used sparingly.

Negative bonuses / drawbacks can absolutely be part of elegant abilities. India’s ability in civ5 is an easy example: Unhappiness from pops halved, unhappiness from # cities doubled.

Given that a civilization is a package of a leader and civ ability plus 2 uniques and a starting bias, there are a lot of pieces to play with when designing one. Drawbacks, to me, should mostly rest with the uniques and sometimes leaders. Designs like Mali and Babylon can be fun, but I personally think almost all civs should play as “vanilla plus extra” rather than have such drastic levels of specialization.