Generic Civs Revisited

[Hydromancerx]

I was talking with strategyonly and we got on the discussion of generic civs. And he said I should start a new topic on this.

This idea has been around for a long time. The first steps of this was separating out culture units, heroes and buildings from civs. The next step is as follows ...

Each region gets represented by a Greek Symbol.

Alpha = African
Beta = European
Gamma = Asian
Delta = Middle Eastern
Epsilon = North American
Zeta = South America
Omega = Oceanian

This would mean that say Omega civs would get Oceania as their special building.


Delta (Middle Eastern) Colors

Then we give colors to each region. Note that existing civs could be converted so not to break peoples game such as ...

Beta Purple = Roman
Beta White = English
Beta Blue = French
Epsilon Cyan = Maya
Epsilon Lime = Aztec
Alpha Orange = Carthage
Alpha Gold = Egypt
Alpha Yellow = Zulu
Gamma Magenta = China
Gamma Red = Japan

Thus each flag would be replaced by those above.

Leaderheads are kept but can be used by ANY regional civ. Such as Tokugawa can be used by Gamma Red Empire or Gamma Blue Empire or Gamma Green Empire. Basically any of the Asian civs can use any of the Asian leaders, and the same for the other regions.

Having leaders kept can still allow us to add more leaders if we want in the furture but they are not bound a by a re preset civ.

People currently have been confused on why they can pick say English civ yet are not guaranteed English culture, units or heroes. This way there would be no more English civ to pick but rather "Beta White Empire" that would have the old city flavors and unit styles but under a different more generic name. Note that their color names would be based on the territory colors they already have.

In short this method would allow us to keep all existing leaders. All existing civs would need to be renamed and get new flags. All leaders would need to be tweaked so they were available to any civ in their region.

This means AI personalities would still work because leaders would still be the same. Culturally Link Starts should still work since say Delta civs would spawn next to Delta civs. Likewise revolutions should still work where Delta civs are more likely to revolt from Delta civs.

What do you guys think?

 

[robomani]

Look good but I think I just having the color for the empire name would sound better

The Red empire start a war with the White kingdom.
sound better for me than
The Gamma Red empire start a war with the Beta White kingdom.

But it is only an aesthetic disagreement I totally approve of the idea itself.

 

[Dissonance]

Personally, I find it too generic. Civ games frequently put me "in character", and this would disrupt that.

Is it possible to have the name change as time goes on? For example, pick up the name from the first culture you build? (Roman Empire) This could even be mixed (Roman-Russian Kingdom) or made into multi-culture entities (Say, if you have 4+ European cultures, you become the European Empire)

EDIT: Also to move away from Alpha Red, maybe call them after their Real World continent's major natural feature? For example, Alpha Red Tribe would become the Savannah Red Tribe (or Red Savannah) until they develop a culture. Asia = bamboo, Europe = forest, North America = plains, South America = jungle, Oceania = Ocean, Africa = Savannah, Middle East = Desert

EDIT2: Just to explain my "in character" comment more, when playing as a specific nation (Russia, Carthage, Israel are my three favorites) I greatly enjoy imagining the prehistoric peoples of that culture working to build the empire from nothing, trying to coordinate some of my decisions to what actually happened, and reflecting on how the divergent landscape affects the outcomes. An Alpha Red empire does not speak to me at all, it doesn't evoke a feeling of people. If this is included, consider allowing "classic empires" as a game option.

 

[Iceciro]

Can you link the dynamic civ names mod into this, based on your cultural wonders, so you could pick up the existing English civilization titles and the like, or even change flags dynamically, so you could still "become" the cultural civilizations? Not sure how that'd work when you have multiple cultures, though...

 

[Hydromancerx]

Look good but I think I just having the color for the empire name would sound better

The Red empire start a war with the White kingdom.
sound better for me than
The Gamma Red empire start a war with the Beta White kingdom.

But it is only an aesthetic disagreement I totally approve of the idea itself.

The reason the Greek letters were needed is that there are a limited number of colors. For instance I think Congo and China were both Magenta in color. That's why they are not just Red Empire or Blue Empire.

Personally, I find it too generic. Civ games frequently put me "in character", and this would disrupt that.

Is it possible to have the name change as time goes on? For example, pick up the name from the first culture you build? (Roman Empire) This could even be mixed (Roman-Russian Kingdom) or made into multi-culture entities (Say, if you have 4+ European cultures, you become the European Empire)

EDIT: Also to move away from Alpha Red, maybe call them after their Real World continent's major natural feature? For example, Alpha Red Tribe would become the Savannah Red Tribe (or Red Savannah) until they develop a culture. Asia = bamboo, Europe = forest, North America = plains, South America = jungle, Oceania = Ocean, Africa = Savannah, Middle East = Desert

Well one can already go into your settings and chnage the name of the civ and leader of your game. However I think your point is having the AI chnage its name too. I know in the past we had things like "The Queendom of Spain", I think possibly names could be changed. However it could get messy if you had a ton of different culture wonders. Which is why I was trying to keep it simple for the name.

Can you link the dynamic civ names mod into this, based on your cultural wonders, so you could pick up the existing English civilization titles and the like, or even change flags dynamically, so you could still "become" the cultural civilizations? Not sure how that'd work when you have multiple cultures, though...

I don't know if it would be possible.

 

[Dissonance]

Well one can already go into your settings and chnage the name of the civ and leader of your game. However I think your point is having the AI chnage its name too. I know in the past we had things like "The Queendom of Spain", I think possibly names could be changed. However it could get messy if you had a ton of different culture wonders. Which is why I was trying to keep it simple for the name.

That's exactly it - I would like to see other nations change their names. If Dynamic Name Change is an option, here's how I'd do it:
- First culture = your name (Roman Empire)
- Second culture = Mixed name (Roman-Celtic Empire)
- More than 50% of any continent's culture = continent-based name (European Empire)

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Each region gets represented by a Greek Symbol.

Alpha = African
Beta = European
Gamma = Asian
Delta = Middle Eastern
Epsilon = North American
Zeta = South America
Omega = Oceanian

This would mean that say Omega civs would get Oceania as their special building.

What do you guys think?

Why use a Greek symbol when you already have the base culture? Why not Purple European rather than Purple Beta? Assuming we are going with starting base cultures. If we get to choose our base cultural group in game then OK, we stat as Alpha Purple but later choose African base culture and become African Purple.

The reason the Greek letters were needed is that there are a limited number of colors. For instance I think Congo and China were both Magenta in color. That's why they are not just Red Empire or Blue Empire.

I think this can be changed somewhat as I saw a thread about adding 160 colours.

 

[Randomness]

Have you guys seen Ea, the civ 5 mod. There you select your race, then your civ name and abilities are determined by your actions. Currently, you only get 1 civ trait, but the plan is to have traits added as the game goes on. Something like this might work if you chose region instead of race.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=483622 (Link to Ea).

 

[Hydromancerx]

Why use a Greek symbol when you already have the base culture?

Because I was trying to keep them different but still non-language specific. When making the Flag I did not want it saying Africa or Europe becuase people in other languages could not read it.

However if they are Greek symbols then it would not matter your language. I could have used Shapes too. I also tried to have a silhouette of their region but it did not
work out well.

Using Shapes seems weird if you saying Red Square Empire or Yellow Circle Empire. Plus they may look too much like existing flags if I did that.

Why not Purple European rather than Purple Beta? Assuming we are going with starting base cultures. If we get to choose our base cultural group in game then OK, we stat as Alpha Purple but later choose African base culture and become African Purple.

There is a problem with picking your region later. I assume at Cultural Identity or something.

1. What would be the "flavor" of your civ before you picked a regional culture?

2. What about the other early cultures you can get BEFORE Cultural Identity?

That's why I am at least saying that when you pick your civ in the beginning your at least picking your native region.

I think this can be changed somewhat as I saw a thread about adding 160 colours.

Having colors is one thing, naming colors is another. If you have ever read the colors in a cryaon box you can see how crazy some of the names get. And sometimes the colors are so similar. Like the difference between a Teal and a Turquoise. Also do we want dash names like Blue-Green or Red-Orange or Green-Yellow? Or light/dark such as Light Blue, Dark Blue or Light Green and Dark Green.

I also apologize for anyone who is color blind. At least they will have text names.

 

[Iceciro]

frankly if we're going this far, why are we still separate cultures by five continents it may or may not exist in a given game? I mean it seems silly to try to make the cultures adhere to the old earth style when nothing else does...

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

frankly if we're going this far, why are we still separate cultures by five continents it may or may not exist in a given game? I mean it seems silly to try to make the cultures adhere to the old earth style when nothing else does...

Animal spawning does.

Off topic: I have just been listening to a Science Show (radio program) where they were replaying some episodes from "Radio Lab". It was on colour, and it appears that all ancient texts don't mention colour or only black, white and maybe red. Even Homer only used those! Their theory is that until you can make a colour and give it a name you don't notice the colour and it does not exist as if you were colour blind. The usual discovery of colours goes red, yellow, green and last blue. The ancient Egyptians had blue but the classical Greeks did not. There was much to back this up but I was driving so did not get to write the details down.

 

[strategyonly]

Off topic: I have just been listening to a Science Show (radio program) where they were replaying some episodes from "Radio Lab". It was on colour, and it appears that all ancient texts don't mention colour or only black, white and maybe red. Even Homer only used those! Their theory is that until you can make a colour and give it a name you don't notice the colour and it does not exist as if you were colour blind. The usual discovery of colours goes red, yellow, green and last blue. The ancient Egyptians had blue but the classical Greeks did not. There was much to back this up but I was driving so did not get to write the details down.

That does make sense in a weird way. i guess

 

[Hydromancerx]

*removed*

 

[T C]

I like this idea a lot. However, I would like it to be more dynamic, with names based on the cultures the player or the AI builds. I have an idea about how this might be achieved.

Often you can build the same culture in more than one city, that is, you could build it, because more than one city meets the requirements, but you only actually build it in one. So, for example, you may have 4 cities that can build Mongolian culture, 3 that can build Siamese, 2 that can build Indian, and several culture for which only one city meets the requirements. My proposal would be to make, in my example, Mongolian the dominant culture and have the empire named the Mongolian Empire.

I think this could be achieved by buildings. So when you build a culture, every city which meets the requirements for that culture, gets a building. Of course, empires expand and contract, and new cultures emerge, so, every so often, the game should check to see which is the dominant culture and change the empire name accordingly. In situations where 2 or more cultures have as many cities, the game could choose at random from them, the player could choose (I'm not sure if this is possible) or it could be chosen based on population or the largest cities.

 

[W|M]

Animal spawning does.

That doesn´t make it right.

Also, why are you using Omega (Ω/&#969 instead of Eta (Η/&#951 for a continent? Η is the letter after Z, not Ω.

 

[Arakhor]

frankly if we're going this far, why are we still separate cultures by five continents it may or may not exist in a given game? I mean it seems silly to try to make the cultures adhere to the old earth style when nothing else does...

That's another of my gripes with the mod. Employing geographical culture names is highly Earth-centric and frequently won't apply, even on a Giant Eart Mod with historical start locations.

 

[Thunderbrd]

This could form a decent basis, though again I'd rather see the initial 'base culture' available to a civ, or automatically given to a civ, no matter how generic it may be, be based on where they start their first city instead of any game choice at the beginning. If we try to make this work through 'culturally linked starts' it messes with a team start - the team members are supposed to start relatively close to one another regardless of what they choose at the beginning. I'm not sure if the Culturally Linked start overrides this or is thrown off by this.

I'd also like to still eventually work towards an Adopt a Culture mechanism that would then change the name and flag to the name and flag of the culture adopted (and perhaps the graphic references could be altered by this decision as well.) But that'll be a while before I can work on that at all.

In the meantime, I'm not overly concerned with how we go about things but genericalizing the initial civ selection simply to give us varieties that don't have any particular cultural basis is probably a very good idea in general. This would indeed avoid some confusion about Civ vs Culture definitions that have come up in C2C.

 

[Hydromancerx]

Good point TB. So no matter where we go from here are we in an agreement that having a base of generic flags and names like I proposed in the first post should be done?

I see no reason why my proposals would stop further development or civs through the suggested methods or even a Cultural Heritage mod (or both). I also think this step is not only doable but the most practical for how our mod is set up at the moment.

If its ok with you guys (specifically the mod team) I would like to get started on this. which means we need ...

1. Civ text to be changed to new names.

2. Civ buttons changed to new flags

3. Civ flags changed to new flags.

4. And the hardest part, getting leaders available to all civs in their region type.

I shall see if I can make a test mod changing maybe one of the modular civs.

 

[strategyonly]

Good point TB. So no matter where we go from here are we in an agreement that having a base of generic flags and names like I proposed in the first post should be done?

I see no reason why my proposals would stop further development or civs through the suggested methods or even a Cultural Heritage mod (or both). I also think this step is not only doable but the most practical for how our mod is set up at the moment.

If its ok with you guys (specifically the mod team) I would like to get started on this. which means we need ...

1. Civ text to be changed to new names.

2. Civ buttons changed to new flags

3. Civ flags changed to new flags.

4. And the hardest part, getting leaders available to all civs in their region type.

I shall see if I can make a test mod changing maybe one of the modular civs.

OK if every (modders then) are in agreement, I need: Koshling Yes/No, DH Yes/No, AIAndy Yes/No (PM him), TB Yes/No, CIVPlayer8 Yes/No, Sgtslick Yes/No???

Also how do you want me to proceed on the Heroes. use that thread thx.

 

[Hydromancerx]

So I ran into a problem. The city names. Hmm what to do about this. You can't just remove them since the AI needs to name the cities something. However you can totally tell what civ it use to be by the names of the cities they make. Any ideas?