Gripes with Great People

[Naokaukodem]

I agree about settlers being central to the game, so I’m not proposing we get rid of them. Settlers and Great People, sure, keep them. Most others should get the axe, IMO.

I'm on the opposite side : I would be kind of reluctant to remove workers/builders, but I could totally see cities being constructed from another city, with something like 7 tiles radius. Would be part of emergent gameplay with many modification brang to the game though. (for example one I can think of right now is the scouts discovering new lands first = those lands are yours)

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I'm on the opposite side : I would be kind of reluctant to remove workers/builders, but I could totally see cities being constructed from another city, with something like 7 tiles radius. Would be part of emergent gameplay with many modification brang to the game though. (for example one I can think of right now is the scouts discovering new lands first = those lands are yours)

The way I see it, a Settler is less of an abstraction than a Builder, so if I had to pick one to remove, it would be the Builder units.

After all, Builders are simply a representation of the efforts of mostly individual people in building structures, clearing land, putting down farms and mines and fisheries: all of which can be represented by 'spending' Gold, Production, or Religion (which I read as Fervor and Enthusiasm that can be harnessed to get things done without spending quite so much of your Gold). There could just as easily be a Cost in those currencies to every Improvement constructed, and in fact by varying the Cost depending on Technology available, Social and Civic Policies, even Population, we could get a much more flexible form of 'building' in the game.

The Settler, of course, is also an Abstraction, but not quite as much. Real Civs did send groups of people off for the express purpose of starting a new city or town, from the Classical Era (Greece, Rome, China, Phoenician cities) through the Age of
Exploration (England, Scotland, France, etc). The only thing I might change about the Settler as a unit is that frequently they brought with them the means to 'jump start' their new Homes: slapping up Fortifications or trading posts/wharfs almost instantly in a way that the game rarely allows. I would like to have the Option of putting more resources into a Settler to Personalize the unit according to my Civ's Purpose (trade, exploitation, military outpost) and capabilities.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Since I always play with Monopolies and Corporations mode on, I keep some just to turn the industries into corporations. Hopefully that feature retains in Civ 7.

My main gripe is I do wish that Great Prophets did more than just found a religion.

There are a few mods that play with that concept

DB Multiplayer Gold takes the “Evangelizing” ability away from Apostles, who are now primarily Religion Combat units, and gives that ability to Great Prophets

The first one you earn founds a religion, subsequent Great Prophets let you add beliefs like Apostles used to.

This seems so simple it baffles me that it wasn’t this way to begin with

The downside is that this mod is one of those mods that edits so much that it’s pretty much incompatible with every other religion mod.

Another mod called Rule with Faith:Great Theologians adds a new Great Person called a Great Theologian, that are earned with Great Prophet points that gives you various abilities.

It doesn’t have anything to do with war or combat (my least favorite parts of Civ actually),

Civilian units are mostly a pointless and tedious interface between the player and the resulting action.

There’s no reason the player can’t just place improvements or railroads on the map, for instance, like districts. Why does there need to be a builder or military engineer to do these things?

The fact that trade is represented by an actual unit leads to the confusing decoupling between diplomatic trade and trade routes between cities. These concepts should be linked.

Religious units are probably the worst offender: all religious decision-making should be at a much bigger scale than individual units walking to a city to convert it or fight other missionaries in some cheesy pseudo combat.

Most aspects of the game could be streamlined and made more elegant by taking the civilian unit vectors out of the game.

I’ve always thought that once you climb high enough on the civics tree you should have the option to simply buy improvements, districts and buildings with gold.

Religious combat is absolutly ridiculous, but part of me can’t resist the silliness of making a custom religion called Sith Lords, taking all the religious combat bonuses, and sending out Apostles to shoot force lightning at Buddhists and stuff.

“So be it, Zoroaster”. BZZZZZZZ

 

[BuchiTaton]

I'm on the opposite side : I would be kind of reluctant to remove workers/builders, but I could totally see cities being constructed from another city, with something like 7 tiles radius. Would be part of emergent gameplay with many modification brang to the game though. (for example one I can think of right now is the scouts discovering new lands first = those lands are yours)

Settlers have some abilities that make them necessary. Just by the start of the game, you have a Settler to choose where to found your first city, and long distance foundations like oversea colonies would be impractical as a mere city project.

On the contrary Builder/Worker unit using "building charges" is kind of silly. Like your workers work to die or what? Meanwhile if we think about the Tile Improvements that Builders construct, most of them make more sense as Villages since historicaly workers live near their job, so we have Farming Villages instead of Farms, Mining Villages instead of Mines, or Pastoral Villages instead of Pasture. Under this more realistic abstraction it is also easier to see the "building charges" as "foundations" then like Settlers can use be used on one place to start a city, what if the settlers are distributed to found villages!?
So Settlers would have the option to found a City using all their "charges" or found multiple Villages with parts of those "charges".

 

[Naokaukodem]

The way I see it, a Settler is less of an abstraction than a Builder, so if I had to pick one to remove, it would be the Builder units.

After all, Builders are simply a representation of the efforts of mostly individual people in building structures, clearing land, putting down farms and mines and fisheries: all of which can be represented by 'spending' Gold, Production, or Religion (which I read as Fervor and Enthusiasm that can be harnessed to get things done without spending quite so much of your Gold). There could just as easily be a Cost in those currencies to every Improvement constructed, and in fact by varying the Cost depending on Technology available, Social and Civic Policies, even Population, we could get a much more flexible form of 'building' in the game.

For the game to be more realistic yes maybe but for emergent gameplay and organical expansion I would prefer settlers to be just voporished, at least as an experimentation, maybe in a mod or mode.

The Settler, of course, is also an Abstraction, but not quite as much. Real Civs did send groups of people off for the express purpose of starting a new city or town, from the Classical Era (Greece, Rome, China, Phoenician cities) through the Age of
Exploration (England, Scotland, France, etc). The only thing I might change about the Settler as a unit is that frequently they brought with them the means to 'jump start' their new Homes: slapping up Fortifications or trading posts/wharfs almost instantly in a way that the game rarely allows. I would like to have the Option of putting more resources into a Settler to Personalize the unit according to my Civ's Purpose (trade, exploitation, military outpost) and capabilities.

Settlers in reality as I see it were more the exception than the rule though : all the land was populated from the start (4000 BCE) so they would steal territory to other people, and as it would be suicide to send unprotected people like that "colonizing", because that's a colonization, lands that belong to others, at least make them able to defend themselves, or need to escort them with military if they are stolen, because otherwise they should run away.

Settlers have some abilities that make them necessary. Just by the start of the game, you have a Settler to choose where to found your first city, and long distance foundations like oversea colonies would be impractical as a mere city project.

On the contrary Builder/Worker unit using "building charges" is kind of silly. Like your workers work to die or what? Meanwhile if we think about the Tile Improvements that Builders construct, most of them make more sense as Villages since historicaly workers live near their job, so we have Farming Villages instead of Farms, Mining Villages instead of Mines, or Pastoral Villages instead of Pasture. Under this more realistic abstraction it is also easier to see the "building charges" as "foundations" then like Settlers can all settler in one place to start a city, what if the settlers are distributed to found villages!?
So Settlers would have the option to found a City using all their "charges" or found multiple Villages.

Yes along the organical sprawling of empires, I envisaged proper settlers that would colonize lands far away, or simply forwards-settling another foe as a tactic of denial, but they would cost much more that mere villages, because they would be kind of a military force also, and be prepared to a long travel on their own. Settlers would form colonies that could yield quite significantly before their more or less inevitable rebellion and loss. (with exceptions as to keeping them until modern days, it is to say the end of the game)

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Settlers in reality as I see it were more the exception than the rule though : all the land was populated from the start (4000 BCE) so they would steal territory to other people, and as it would be suicide to send unprotected people like that "colonizing", because that's a colonization, lands that belong to others, at least make them able to defend themselves, or need to escort them with military if they are stolen, because otherwise they should run away.

I've seen this statement: "all the land was populated from the start . . ." many times, and in both reality and in a Game sense it just weren't so. A more accurate statement would be that By 4000 BCE all the land had been populated at one time, but not all of it still was. That's because human populations were Mobile since the last glaciation (20,000 - 10,000 BCE) with sometimes drastic effects.
Best example is Europe, which was very lightly populated by hunter-gatherers until people with agriculture (farmers) started moving up the Danube valley from Anatolia after 6500 BCE. Then around 4000 - 3400 BCE the herders (Yamnaya Culture) started moving in from the steppes, bringing with them herds of sheep, horses, cattle - and Plague. Populations all over Europe went down dramatically - as in, agriculture was abandoned in the British Isles for several centuries because there weren't enough people left to require farming to feed them.

So, depending on when the game starts, Europe is either lightly populated, fairly densely populated, or unpopulated.

More recently, in the great Greek Colonization period from approximately 800 - 600 BCE they planted colonies all over the coasts of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, including areas like the Balkans, France, Italy, Spain that we know had existing populations, but there is almost no evidence of major warfare in any of those places. Instead, it appears that wherever the New Folks showed up, people preferred to Trade rather than fight, which resulted in sizeable Greek cities like Napolis (Naples), Syracuse, Marsalla (Marseilles) - all great trading cities. Note that also there is no evidence that the Greek Settlers ever had to make an Omaha Beach-style amphibious landing with Hoplites on a hostile shore . . .
.

 

[BackseatTyrant]

I really don't think civilian units are all that tedious to deal with; that's really only the case when there's nothing to do with them. The classic cases for me, would be when a Great Artist has to remain idle because all the Great Work of Art slots have been filled, or a Trader unit having to remain idle because the trade route capacity went down from a Commercial hub being pillaged. Come to think of it, why can't Builder/Engineer units repair damaged districts or buildings? Why does the repairing have to be through the construction queue?

Forcing the player to wait for choices being made available, is in my opinion bad game design, and I feel replacing civilian units with more abstract mechanics is doing just that. Even if we were to count a unit walking from one place to another as waiting, at least that's a more visual and tangible component compared to a simple progress bar. By contrast, I've come to really like the gameplay loop of interacting with other players and the map itself through non-violent means, making the exploration aspects that much more bespoke, and it's a component I wish for future games to expand even further upon. If that sounds like it would stray the game so far from Civilization's core concept that it may as well be an entirely new IP, well, let's just say I don't have the skills or resources needed to actually make said IP a reality.

Lastly, I've been trying to skirt around this issue as much as possible, in the hopes that the rest of you would understand through implication, but now I feel I actually have to be explicit about this: I oppose Great People as a concept, out of an ideological basis. Reducing the accomplishments of all of humanity to a few venerated individuals, contributes to a worldview that can make one less empathetic, less curious, and more hubristic. (Please note that I say 'contributes to' instead of 'causes' because nothing about humans is ever that absolute, so if you feel inclined to protest because you yourself don't believe Great Man Theory applies to the real world, that just means your media literacy is substantially above average; don't worry about it.) Anyway, that's the reason I've been arguing Great People should be replaced with more generic civilian units: to give the player the sense they're playing as the collective spirit of the masses, rather than as an immortal elite ruling over said masses

 

[Evie]

Better said than I could, Backseat Tyrant, but largely echoes the discomfort I’m feeling at the idea of abolishing civilian units. While the integration can be done better than some of the more extreme example in VI, I want as much of the game played on map, not off map, as possible.

 

[BackseatTyrant]

Settlers have some abilities that make them necessary. Just by the start of the game, you have a Settler to choose where to found your first city, and long distance foundations like oversea colonies would be impractical as a mere city project.

On the contrary Builder/Worker unit using "building charges" is kind of silly. Like your workers work to die or what? Meanwhile if we think about the Tile Improvements that Builders construct, most of them make more sense as Villages since historicaly workers live near their job, so we have Farming Villages instead of Farms, Mining Villages instead of Mines, or Pastoral Villages instead of Pasture. Under this more realistic abstraction it is also easier to see the "building charges" as "foundations" then like Settlers can use be used on one place to start a city, what if the settlers are distributed to found villages!?
So Settlers would have the option to found a City using all their "charges" or found multiple Villages with parts of those "charges".

This idea could be expanded upon, by replacing both cities and tile improvements altogether with settlements that have no distance requirements but do have a limited amount of buildings that can be placed within each. This would be quite the departure from how we're used to playing civ, but I truly believe that it could be executed well enough

 

[Evie]

As for building charges, the more realistic for limiting workers (and preventing improvement spam) was of course the multi-turns projects, quite frankly while less realistic I prefer builder charges from a game design perspective.

As for realism, they’re corvee workers who are only beholden to work for you for a limited amount of time after which they go home and you must set up a new corvee for new workers. Perfect, no, but a good enough rationalization for an abstraction.

It’s only the most common model of labor organization for public works for most of human history, after all.

 

[Naokaukodem]

I've seen this statement: "all the land was populated from the start . . ." many times, and in both reality and in a Game sense it just weren't so. A more accurate statement would be that By 4000 BCE all the land had been populated at one time, but not all of it still was. That's because human populations were Mobile since the last glaciation (20,000 - 10,000 BCE) with sometimes drastic effects.
Best example is Europe, which was very lightly populated by hunter-gatherers until people with agriculture (farmers) started moving up the Danube valley from Anatolia after 6500 BCE. Then around 4000 - 3400 BCE the herders (Yamnaya Culture) started moving in from the steppes, bringing with them herds of sheep, horses, cattle - and Plague. Populations all over Europe went down dramatically - as in, agriculture was abandoned in the British Isles for several centuries because there weren't enough people left to require farming to feed them.

So, depending on when the game starts, Europe is either lightly populated, fairly densely populated, or unpopulated.

Well population before agriculture was scarce, because hunter-gatherers need a lot of space to live, so it's not a proof of evidence as to say that in 4000 BCE Europe was less populated than fully.

More recently, in the great Greek Colonization period from approximately 800 - 600 BCE they planted colonies all over the coasts of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, including areas like the Balkans, France, Italy, Spain that we know had existing populations, but there is almost no evidence of major warfare in any of those places. Instead, it appears that wherever the New Folks showed up, people preferred to Trade rather than fight, which resulted in sizeable Greek cities like Napolis (Naples), Syracuse, Marsalla (Marseilles) - all great trading cities. Note that also there is no evidence that the Greek Settlers ever had to make an Omaha Beach-style amphibious landing with Hoplites on a hostile shore . . .

It's not because we didn't find any evidence of it (how ? where ?) that there haven't been skirmishes (rather than grand wars) due to stranger "stealing" lands. The good sense says that it must have been happening some times, especially in regard of the americano-indians who were constantly in rivalty that was exploited by the conquerors. If I'm right, the animosity native Americans had between themselves matched only the one they had for the colonizators, except alliances against another tribe, which says how much they should have hated each others.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Well population before agriculture was scarce, because hunter-gatherers need a lot of space to live, so it's not a proof of evidence as to say that in 4000 BCE Europe was less populated than fully.

It's not because we didn't find any evidence of it (how ? where ?) that there haven't been skirmishes (rather than grand wars) due to stranger "stealing" lands. The good sense says that it must have been happening some times, especially in regard of the americano-indians who were constantly in rivalty that was exploited by the conquerors. If I'm right, the animosity native Americans had between themselves matched only the one they had for the colonizators, except alliances against another tribe, which says how much they should have hated each others.

Population before agriculture was smaller in total numbers, but not necessarily 'scarce' on the ground: hunter-gatherers covered a lot more ground by necessity looking for food, even being at least semi-mobile following herds of prey animals, so you were probably at least as likely if not more to encounter their groups when you moved into 'their' territory.

In the case of the Greek Colonization, since it was done after they had writing, there should be written accounts of fighting with the 'locals' and there really aren't any (except on the northern shores of the Black Sea, where the Scythians quickly turned most of the Greek colonies into tributary states). In most cases, the new Greeks got included into local power structures - allied with, trading with, negotiating with local political entities. Where they fought, it was as allies to local power groups.

And the same thing happened in the Americas. The fact that Cortez was allied with a bunch of anti-Aztec local cities when he finally conquered Tenochtlan is well-known, but in North America the same dynamic occured. The Pilgrims in Massachussettes Bay could have been wiped out by the local tribe, especially since they had looted that tribe's summer village as soon as they landed, but instead they were co-opted as allies or 'friends' - as a counterweight to other tribes further inland that the locals were feuding with. The recent studies of the Comanche and Lakota tribal groups using masses of very early French and Spanish records of interactions with them show that both tribes, later famous as military powers, started their interacting with Europeans by trading, neotiating, and trying to co-opt the Europeans into their existing struggles with other tribes.

This, in fact, might be a better, although more complex, model of the interactions between Civs and 'barbarians' in Civ VII: rather than uniformly hostile, as handy as that is to the designer trying to compensate for an utterly hapless AI, the tribal huts/barbarian camps should be available for an array of possible responses, including on-going trade, alliance, mutual aid, etc as well as the unrelenting raiding that usually only seems to have developed after negative experiences from contact with the 'civilized' groups.

 

[civac]

The barbarians of yestergames serve a certain function. They inhibit rexxing by forcing escorts and garrisons. Maybe that was not intended by the designers but that is ultimately their effect. More intelligent behaviour on their part is not necessarily advantageous. If they routinely walk around strong points to pillage tiles they become a frustrating source of randomness rather than a tax on your expansion.

It's likely a good idea as some have advocated of folding them and city states into some kind of minor faction concept. Though it is not quite clear how that would work in practice and what would or should differentiate a minor faction from a real faction.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Population before agriculture was smaller in total numbers, but not necessarily 'scarce' on the ground: hunter-gatherers covered a lot more ground by necessity looking for food, even being at least semi-mobile following herds of prey animals, so you were probably at least as likely if not more to encounter their groups when you moved into 'their' territory.

Exactly.

In the case of the Greek Colonization, since it was done after they had writing, there should be written accounts of fighting with the 'locals' and there really aren't any (except on the northern shores of the Black Sea, where the Scythians quickly turned most of the Greek colonies into tributary states). In most cases, the new Greeks got included into local power structures - allied with, trading with, negotiating with local political entities. Where they fought, it was as allies to local power groups.

And the same thing happened in the Americas. The fact that Cortez was allied with a bunch of anti-Aztec local cities when he finally conquered Tenochtlan is well-known, but in North America the same dynamic occured. The Pilgrims in Massachussettes Bay could have been wiped out by the local tribe, especially since they had looted that tribe's summer village as soon as they landed, but instead they were co-opted as allies or 'friends' - as a counterweight to other tribes further inland that the locals were feuding with. The recent studies of the Comanche and Lakota tribal groups using masses of very early French and Spanish records of interactions with them show that both tribes, later famous as military powers, started their interacting with Europeans by trading, neotiating, and trying to co-opt the Europeans into their existing struggles with other tribes.

From what your saying from what reached us, it's then more about colonizators being an opportunity to fight against enemies (like they are represented in Civ5 by city-States) than directly fight against them. That could be explained by the fear of the new, and a new that can reach your lands suddenly, so with high powers. I don't think it's purely "good savage" stuff, they are all decisions made after-thinking IMO. However you say yourself that there is famous exceptions, so I expect that there is less famous ones too, like "lost convoys" nobody heard of anymore ?

The barbarians of yestergames serve a certain function. They inhibit rexxing by forcing escorts and garrisons. Maybe that was not intended by the designers but that is ultimately their effect. More intelligent behaviour on their part is not necessarily advantageous. If they routinely walk around strong points to pillage tiles they become a frustrating source of randomness rather than a tax on your expansion.

IMO they were made to give something more to worry about early, in cases of isolated starts like they were common in Civ1 and Civ2 on standard maps. Now that we can choose to start on a small pangaea, they are less obvious. That's why I disable them, they are more an annoyance that can become frustrating than a welcomed distraction that creates stories.

It's likely a good idea as some have advocated of folding them and city states into some kind of minor faction concept.

And goody huts/tribal villages too ! Otherwise I don't like too much the term "minor factions", at least clearly depicted in a gameplay mechanism.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

And goody huts/tribal villages too ! Otherwise I don't like too much the term "minor factions", at least clearly depicted in a gameplay mechanism.

"Minor Factions" is so generic as to be near-meaningless. It could describe anything from the current Tribal Huts to City States to a playable Civ trying to go Tall when everyone else on the map is going Wide.

On the other hand, I think the game is well-served by having several different Less-Than-Playable-Civilization type entities on the map. The current heirarchy from least to greatest is:
Tribal Huts - ephemeral, disappear as soon as contacted.
Barbarian Camps - one-dimensional, and have always seemed to be included to provide some kind of opposition when the AI doesn't
City States - a good place to park potential Civs that cannot be modeled as playable, either because their language and leaders are Unknown or they were too historically momentary or non-city-building to provide a city list. Given that they could be programmed to spawn units as fast as Raging Barbarians do now, this category could actually be much more useful than it is now: they could represent everything from Scythians to Saami, large tribal groups, semi-nomadic groups, and a host of others.
Playable Civilizations. - which, because the City States are rather under-utilized, includes some dubious contenders, especially among the modded Civs which can get away without languages, well-attested City Lists, or leader portrayals.

I have argued for some time that the best change to this system would be combining the Tribal Huts and Barbarian Camps into one category: Settlements, which could be either friendly or hostile or neutral, trade information, resources, provide units or provide a continuous raiding nuisance - the Barbarian Clans Mode, but with additional features from the Tribal Huts so that these are not necessarily Always Hostile and to be eliminated ASAP.

I would particularly like to see Settlements and City States be sources for Resources not otherwise easily available or special units as Mercenaries to be hired: Horse Archers, specialized Slingers spring to mind, or the historical trade in Amber, metals and other materials frequently done in the Classical era by Non-State actors.

Given that on average a game has twice or more as many City States as Civs in it, and at least 1 - 2 Camps/Huts for each Civ or City State, this would open up a much wider range of interactions throughout the game, economically, militarily, diplomatically, and even with regard to culture/religion.

And finally, this re-design of the Barbarian/Tribal characters would allow us to more accurately model the interactions of new Colonies with their neighbors instead of having those interactions defined by the type of neighbor and independent of the colonizing gamer's actions.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

The barbarians of yestergames serve a certain function. They inhibit rexxing by forcing escorts and garrisons. Maybe that was not intended by the designers but that is ultimately their effect. More intelligent behaviour on their part is not necessarily advantageous. If they routinely walk around strong points to pillage tiles they become a frustrating source of randomness rather than a tax on your expansion.

It's likely a good idea as some have advocated of folding them and city states into some kind of minor faction concept. Though it is not quite clear how that would work in practice and what would or should differentiate a minor faction from a real faction.

My ideas are similar to what was said above. A minor factio" would essentially be any entity that's not a playable civilization which would include the various city-states and "tribal settlements" which would be a combination of tribal huts and barbarians. These tribal settlements can eventually become city-states.

 

[Naokaukodem]

"Minor Factions" is so generic as to be near-meaningless.

Well at least there is "minor", which disturbs me and even goes against my ideal Civ, where everyone could be everything. (playable barbarians to playable "goody huts", aka hunter-gatherers I guess, or even pastoralists, to city-States*)

* For this last one to be playable I imagined kind of a culture tree that may or may not exclude the other options :

- Nomadism (Basics for all)

- Civilization (Civility ?) [>City-State]
Unlocks Agriculture / Ability to have cities beyond size 3.
Locks Pastoralism

- Organization [>Empires/Kingdoms]
Unlocks Settlers / Ability to manage directly several cities
Free Settler

- Pastoralism
Unlocks Military Tech Tree 2 (prevalent at about AD 1200)
Unlocks the Horde (1 pop = 1 military unit + support)
Locks Civilization

- Clans
Unlocks Clans (ability to have allied cities)

- Barbarism
Unlocks Military Tech Tree 1 (prevalent at about AD 400)

Note that this is incomplete and that now I realize it, it would be more of the spirit of Civ5 social policies : you can choose both Civilization and Organization to play more like traditional Civ, but you would be kind of limited for the other choices... (as to the fact that if you take only "Barbarism" and nothing else, I guess you could still produce several encampments of size 3 but wouldn't have direct control of them - but ideally they couild build units or give some military production to your capital, something like that I don't know Edit : I guess if you only pick Barbarism you would have a camp and would conquer other civs with military prevalence early, and you might not be able to annex the conquered cities like it was an option in Civ5, I say "may")

 

[GeneralZIft]

Why do you guys go off topic so much

In terms of civilian units - I prefer whatever works for both immersion and gameplay the most.

I like great people because people are great and celebrating humanity is fun and it's educational. I like learning about scientists I've never heard of before and all that - it would lose all of this charm if they were all nameless civilians.
Same reason we play as A Civilisation instead of our own custom civ. The developers knew that people want to align themselves with particular cultures and ideas; basically roleplaying.

Thats the immersive aspect. Now for the gameplay aspect. I cannot condone features that make the game a drag to play, and that includes useless and arbitrary civilian units.
Not all of them are useless, and not all of them are a good idea. I don't know why some people think even Settlers and Builders are too much - how would you play the game otherwise? Be realistic

But do I think the game needs something like Rock Bands? Definitely no. They're unapologetically gamey. All you do is Buy them and send them straight to their RNG-Doom.

Does the game need traders? Yes because not only is it low on "the amount of thought required", but it's actually immersive and generally useful.

So how do Great People stay great? Make them immersive but make them GENERALLY useful instead of... Useful in particular circumstances with particular people. My gripe with great people is (lack of) generality

 

[BuchiTaton]

As for building charges, the more realistic for limiting workers (and preventing improvement spam) was of course the multi-turns projects, quite frankly while less realistic I prefer builder charges from a game design perspective.

As for realism, they’re corvee workers who are only beholden to work for you for a limited amount of time after which they go home and you must set up a new corvee for new workers. Perfect, no, but a good enough rationalization for an abstraction.

It’s only the most common model of labor organization for public works for most of human history, after all.

Giving Settlers most of the Builders functions preserves all the positive elements of their game design. The "builder charges" become "settlement charges" and the Tile Improvements become Villages. When founding a City the Settler spend all charges and the incresed cost from the number of cities is charged at the moment of foundation. Districts foundation could be done also by settlers.

Meanwhile all the improvements that do not make sense as populated places and that are mostly late game infrastructure like Energy Plants and Airfields could be build by the Engineer unit that already is a thing as "Militar Engineer". By the way the support militar units are also some tedious thing that could perfectly be replaced by promotions with a small visual hint, the whole "Militar" part is a joke if they just die when are in combat.
Another also simple and logical option is to let infantry units to get the ability to build those improvements like Forts, that way we have less idle units without the need to add and manage more redundant units.

 

[Evie]

I mean, I can see combining the two units, that's just Civ II all over again, but that's just the thing: the change from II to III I just didn't find to mean much of anything for gameplay, and this seems like it would be more of the same; little more than changing some mild flavor.