JJ10DMAN said:
Well, I read the ENTIRE TOPIC and no one mentioned traits!
3 combinations of traits are not in the game (off the top of my head, Phi/Ind is one), and based on the ones that were left out, it was probably the result of playtesting finding that the combinations were imbalanced. I mean, do you think they had trouble finding 3 more leaders for the existing civs? Of course not.
I don't really care what civs are in an expansion; what's in a name? You're making the civ be whatever you make it. What I *am* interested in is traits. For x new traits, that gives as many as (x²+13x)/2 new leaders. I'm greatly looking forward to what new traits there might be. Let me brainstorm off the cuff here...
While I don't fully agree with your reasoning about why you don't care which civs are added (I myself find a greater, um, affection?, for my civ when I can relate it to some great power from the past), I agree that new traits would be a good addition. Adding them in to a civ already in existance requires only a new leader for the civ, and not a complete reworking of them.
JJ10DMAN said:
Productive: The counterpoint to Financial; if a single worked space produces at least 2 hammers, it gives the city +1 hammer; beyond that, for every 2 additional spaces with at least 2 hammers that is being worked by the city, the city gets another +1 hammer. To prevent too much military abuse, put the cheaper building(s) way at the end of the tech tree; say, factories?
I like this idea, except I would just keep it as an identical twin of Financial; +1 hammer if a space already produces 2. From I've seen and read, not too many cities will be able to take as much gain from it as they would from financial, as clear cutting tends to reduce squares that would otherwise qualify for this bonus. This trait
might, though probably not, even lead to a different path to victory at higher levels than chop chop chop.
JJ10DMAN said:
Naval: I personally never delve much into navy except as a means of transporting land units (and escorting transports). This might not work well in terms of balance, such as being too weak in pangea and too strong in archipelago or terra, but it's worth a thought. Trait would be, say, +1 to naval movement (and thus, far more likely to circumnavigate the globe first for an additional +1, compared to all the non-naval civs in the game). Naval leaders would perhaps include the English, Spanish, and Germans (Nazi U-boats). I'm not a history buff but I'm sure you can think of more examples. Cheap buildings could be Drydock and Lighthouse, but notice this would restrict the option of Nav/Agg or Nav/Exp civs. This wouldn't be a great loss though; Nav/Exp would encourage players to build huge cities on the coast and abandon the interior, and Nav/Agg would simply obliterate anything on the water.
I like this idea even more. I wouldn't even be worried about overlapping cheap buildings; the ones it overlaps with still would bring a third cheap building to the set, and there are some traits that have only 1 cheap building, ex. philosophical with university.
JJ10DMAN said:
Another option is to have 3 positive traits and one negative trait, I.E. Financial, Expansive, and Industrious, but
Anti-Spiritual: Anarchy lasts twice as long, Temples have half production speed.
or Anti-Philisophical:-100% GP points (no GPs except National Epic or some new +5% GP building, or -50% of that's too extreme), half speed of University.
or Anti-Creative: -2 culture per city (minimum 0), the fact that this makes no difference without a source of culture might warrant a -3 instead, half speed of Theatre and Colisseum.
or Anti-Agressive: -2/3 XPs on new units (minimum 0), half speed of Barracks and Drydock
You get the idea.
I'm gonna have to end the agreement here though. DOn't like this for a couple of reasons. 1) Would mean a ton over changes to stuff already in the game, taking up valuable space on the disk that they could be cramming with other stuff. 2) It's like what Soren Johnson talked about in the Afterwords in the manual that came with the game, along the line of how Golden Ages came to be. They started out making civs go through Dark Ages, where everything was terrible, then went back to normal. An interesting idea, but no fun to play through. I think that applies here too, to negative traits. Nobody would enjoy having a penalty; in a way, we all have a ton of penalties by not having the same bonuses that the other traits enjoy (if that makes sense), so why add more?
My idea for another new trait would be Religious. It would give that civ an additional +1 happy face if a city has a religion present, regardless of which religion it is, or if you have a state religion or not. Instead of a cheap building, since Spuritual has temple covered, maybe make Missionaries 1/2 price?
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