Provinces, Travel Time, Cultural Divergence

[civilizationfanatic2000]

Provinces

are divisions of the ingame fractal tiles made by the AI representing the people in your civilization, with automatically generated names based on geographical features. you can also make your own provinces and name them whatever you want. governors/satraps/etc can be assigned to provinces to manage them.

Travel Time

all states will have a Central Authority that can govern more than one city through a Governing Apparatus (I mean you can go without, but you'll be limited to one city). Central Authority radiates power to the surrounding areas, keeping them under control, but they can't get everywhere at once. obstacles like hills, rivers, mountains, or just long distances will increase the Travel Time needed to get from the Central Authority's physical location to the surrounding areas. If the Travel Time is at one year or over, everything over that radius becomes an independent state. You can also make multiple Central Authorities to represent a confederation.

also, the more Travel Time needed, the more culture in each of those places will diverge from the Central Authority's, perhaps to the point where they make their own civilization. Same with multiple Central Authorities.

Cultural Home

Cultures have starting regions, like rivers or lakes. This is where a culture is founded and exhibits a Cultural Guiding Force that radiates onto the surrounding areas to keep it in line with whatever features the Cultural Guiding Force has, like the Central Authority. The difference is that the Central Authority can rule over several cultures, but the Cultural Guiding Force makes and creates only one culture with minor variations. The source of a Cultural Guiding Force is called the Cultural Motherland.

 

[Patine]

Provinces

are divisions of the ingame fractal tiles made by the AI representing the people in your civilization, with automatically generated names based on geographical features. you can also make your own provinces and name them whatever you want. governors/satraps/etc can be assigned to provinces to manage them.

Travel Time

all states will have a Central Authority that can govern more than one city through a Governing Apparatus (I mean you can go without, but you'll be limited to one city). Central Authority radiates power to the surrounding areas, keeping them under control, but they can't get everywhere at once. obstacles like hills, rivers, mountains, or just long distances will increase the Travel Time needed to get from the Central Authority's physical location to the surrounding areas. If the Travel Time is at one year or over, everything over that radius becomes an independent state. You can also make multiple Central Authorities to represent a confederation.

also, the more Travel Time needed, the more culture in each of those places will diverge from the Central Authority's, perhaps to the point where they make their own civilization. Same with multiple Central Authorities.

Cultural Home

Cultures have starting regions, like rivers or lakes. This is where a culture is founded and exhibits a Cultural Guiding Force that radiates onto the surrounding areas to keep it in line with whatever features the Cultural Guiding Force has, like the Central Authority. The difference is that the Central Authority can rule over several cultures, but the Cultural Guiding Force makes and creates only one culture with minor variations. The source of a Cultural Guiding Force is called the Cultural Motherland.

These are interesting ideas, but I'm not sure, again, they are good for a Civ-series game. Certainly not provinces, probably not the other two either. I feel you're trying superimpose ideas from other games onto Civ where they likely would not work well, at all.

 

[civilizationfanatic2000]

These are interesting ideas, but I'm not sure, again, they are good for a Civ-series game. Certainly not provinces, probably not the other two either. I feel you're trying superimpose ideas from other games onto Civ where they likely would not work well, at all.

they're good for a game that tries to be a history game.

if i had the time and knowledge to code a game i would finally be able to test my ideas out

 

[Patine]

they're good for a game that tries to be a history game.

if i had the time and knowledge to code a game i would finally be able to test my ideas out

Civ is not ACTUALLY a histroy game, but a grand 4x build, settle, research, war game with definitiively historical TRAPPINGS and CONCEITS, as myself and several others, like @Boris Gudenuf, for instance, have been trying to impress the concept.

 

[civilizationfanatic2000]

Civ is not ACTUALLY a histroy game, but a grand 4x build, settle, research, war game with definitiively historical TRAPPINGS and CONCEITS, as myself and several others, like @Boris Gudenuf, for instance, have been trying to impress the concept.

i don't see how this and my other ideas conflict with Civ;s 4x historical flavor. Currently, civ's worlds are very dull, they feel less like living worlds you could actually Explore, Expand, Exploit and Exterminate in and more like a theater park board game. mechanics are very unimmersive, exceedingly so for a game.

war time, fractal tiles, tech, spirit of the nation, organizations, etc all exist to increase depth, diversity in civilizations, as well as make the game able to simulate times where history actually exceeded what civilizations in game could do in one of the fields (the conquest of the Americas out Explored and out Exterminated renaissance era civilizations in any civ game, Alexander out Exterminated any ancient or classical era Civilization). There's also the fact that in many of the civilizations they have historical events that simply cannot be replicated in Civ proper, like China breaking apart and reuniting over and over again, the split between Western and Eastern Rome, the way how Germany went from being poor (and I mean poor- the Romans literally could not tax them, they had no wealth by their standards) to being one of the most powerful forces on Europe, Persia/China/Egypt keeping their culture even after being conquered, and in the case of the middle assimilating their conquerers, etc

 

[Patine]

war time, fractal tiles, tech, spirit of the nation, organizations, etc all exist to increase depth, diversity in civilizations, as well as make the game able to simulate times where history actually exceeded what civilizations in game could do in one of the fields (the conquest of the Americas out Explored and out Exterminated renaissance era civilizations in any civ game, Alexander out Exterminated any ancient or classical era Civilization). There's also the fact that in many of the civilizations they have historical events that simply cannot be replicated in Civ proper, like China breaking apart and reuniting over and over again, the split between Western and Eastern Rome, the way how Germany went from being poor (and I mean poor- the Romans literally could not tax them, they had no wealth by their standards) to being one of the most powerful forces on Europe, Persia/China/Egypt keeping their culture even after being conquered, and in the case of the middle assimilating their conquerers, etc

But all of these ideas, as I said also to @luca 83, are predicated on chaining every game to similar historical narrative script, even if one with wiggle-room, and that has NEVER been what Civ games have been trying to accomplish, nor do I believe they should start. The flexible, free-flowing, ultimate open-ended Alternate History IS one of the biggest selling features of Civ over Paradox or Total War, games, for instance, and you seem to demand Civ drop one of it's most iconic and popular feature just to emulate it's competitors - why? For what ultimate gain?

 

[Naokaukodem]

Provinces

are divisions of the ingame fractal tiles made by the AI representing the people in your civilization, with automatically generated names based on geographical features. you can also make your own provinces and name them whatever you want. governors/satraps/etc can be assigned to provinces to manage them.

I'd rather keep the city focus here, being your regions. I'm not a huge fan of Humankind's regions, nor Age of Wonder 4 ones as far as I know them.

Travel Time

all states will have a Central Authority that can govern more than one city through a Governing Apparatus (I mean you can go without, but you'll be limited to one city). Central Authority radiates power to the surrounding areas, keeping them under control, but they can't get everywhere at once. obstacles like hills, rivers, mountains, or just long distances will increase the Travel Time needed to get from the Central Authority's physical location to the surrounding areas. If the Travel Time is at one year or over, everything over that radius becomes an independent state. You can also make multiple Central Authorities to represent a confederation.

also, the more Travel Time needed, the more culture in each of those places will diverge from the Central Authority's, perhaps to the point where they make their own civilization. Same with multiple Central Authorities.

Yes. I call it porosity, and I've repeated this idea to the point I don't want to explain it anymore. But OK... let's say high porosity is where you can travel fast and travel in the first place. Obviously, roads would make any two city connection High Porosity, minus their distance. Grassland, plains, water, with or without roads would have a high porosity, hills, forests, jungle a low porosity (high with roads), and at last mountains and deserts, ice a very, very low porosity. (high with roads, if at all possible : mountains are currently impassable, sand recovers roads, snow recovers roads) Porosity decreases with distance.
This way, you might be able to keep your cities connected to your empire (remain in your possession) even if there is another culture nearby that doesn't have a road to it. You might lose your "colonies" pretty quickly, so why do them in the first place ? The more when it costs you a Settler, it is to say a whole expedition if it wants some chances of success, not to mention the actual travel time on the map, like it is the case in Civ franchise now. (Other cities would be cheaper to build, directly from the queue of another city nearby, let's say 7 (3+3+"1") tiles away max according to Civ5 and 6 standards) So why give the possibility to build such costly expeditions ? Maybe for luxuries and the gold they would generate. To be fair, such colonies should give +100 gold per turn for the time of their existence, or at least for the time you own them. Passed a certain time, they should become city-States (that you could have good relations with, trading deals etc.) that could develop into civs. (if they can and/or choose to) Or they would join another civ if there is one next to it. (the city-State status would replace the free city one maybe ?)
In any case, culture strenght should play a great role into what goes to who. That imples there would be more buildings that you can build that generate culture, other than mere monuments and silly theater squares. (maybe everything would generate culture, and wonders like 10 each or something, even if that's not totally realistic - Stonehenge people we don't know who they were, however that's the only world wonder we know of in the area, or more precisely that *I* know of, there is probably similar constructions in the area, just less impressive nowadays (I mean less well preserved*))

Cultural Home

Cultures have starting regions, like rivers or lakes. This is where a culture is founded and exhibits a Cultural Guiding Force that radiates onto the surrounding areas to keep it in line with whatever features the Cultural Guiding Force has, like the Central Authority. The difference is that the Central Authority can rule over several cultures, but the Cultural Guiding Force makes and creates only one culture with minor variations. The source of a Cultural Guiding Force is called the Cultural Motherland.

Interesting. However I would tend to tie culture with civs and factions still. Ideally, the map would be full of units, be them hunter-gatherers people or armies from an empire. It may be way more difficult to contact other civs, I mean to uncover the entire pangaea, early. That being said, I believe that the scout unit is anachronistic : wandering in the pampa, depending of your neighbours and their culture (cannibalism, aggressivity, etc.), or even wild animal, shouldn't have been a party taken lightly. I mean even mere gatherers should be slingers at some point. Rest the moving capacity and the cheapest cost, which offers another choice early. But I think there is enough choices early as is.

EDIT : * = It's why Stonehenge is considered a World Wonder in Civ in the first place - because it spectacularly more or less stood the test of time. Obviously, it's not totally exact because we can't say the same from the Great Library, the Colossus or the Great Lighthouse - even if they were mentionned in different ancient written works that gave them all their shining. So it's not all that much to stand the test of time, but more to stand the test of "a" time, and in so just being remarkable. For doing so, you better be mighty and be noticeable by travelers in History. (when writing is a thing) Sometimes it will disappear in the meantime, some other times it will be preserved until nowadays. I mean, Stonehenge wasn't probably remarkable in its time, or maybe not that much compared to other similar structures in the area. Then, and that's where I want to go, what kind of generic yields any wonder could give at all times ? That's the limit of "each wonder gives 10 culture points per turn". Every wonder is remarkable for different reasons. And I don't think Stonehenge should give any particular cultural output, unless you can build several in the world.

 

[civilizationfanatic2000]

But all of these ideas, as I said also to @luca 83, are predicated on chaining every game to similar historical narrative script, even if one with wiggle-room, and that has NEVER been what Civ games have been trying to accomplish, nor do I believe they should start. The flexible, free-flowing, ultimate open-ended Alternate History IS one of the biggest selling features of Civ over Paradox or Total War, games, for instance, and you seem to demand Civ drop one of it's most iconic and popular feature just to emulate it's competitors - why? For what ultimate gain?

That's not what I want. What I want is a Civ that still has non-Earth maps and histories and so on. But the states are too static, too big, and too monolithic, the technology trees linear and Eurocentric, the world too empty, and the wars too long. It feels, again, extremely unimmersive.

There is a reason why China persisted as a series of continuous states uniting its region—geography allowing for short Travel Times, little Cultural Divergence, and one strong Cultural Guiding Force.

There is a reason why states don't last forever. Internal conflict, external conflict, climate change.

There is a reason why European colonization was a thing, stretching all the way back to the rise of Islam, the exhaustion of two ancient empires, the collapse of one, and the invasion of several peoples.

What Civilization as it is now is trying to do is attempt to simulate the effects of significant historical events without their causes. Those causes are inseparable from material reality. As long as Civ continues to have Earth-like worlds, these causes will always apply. It is better to replicate the causes, so a player experienced enough can mitigate them, so the causes themselves can be used for other purposes.

A game where you could FEASIBLY replicate events on the same scale, the same type as the conquests of Alexander, the collapse of Han, the Warring States of China, the Barbarian Invasions, the Indo-Aryan Invasions, the Mongol Invasions, the Peloponnesian War, within the same technological level and calendar date as the events IRL in normal gameplay and not a scenario will always be more fun than one where you spend 30 years making a single unit that then takes 50 years to travel across a single area. And these historical examples are not chains. They are guidelines. Sure, nothing prevents you from plopping Greece in a subtropical plain bordered on all sides by sea. But it won't be the Greece you know, the one that had slavery, the one that was located near Egypt and Babylon, the one that was no more than a collection of city-states on a rocky peninsula. Geography, organizations, classes, technology, government- all of those are important to a civilization's workings and existence. And nothing prevents you from going to war with China as India on a map where there's no mountain chain separating you from them. But the war will take no more than a single turn, time slowed down to allow you to strategize to your whims.

I'd rather keep the city focus here, being your regions. I'm not a huge fan of Humankind's regions, nor Age of Wonder 4 ones as far as I know them.

One could have communities (from an earlier idea of mine) be a base. In that thread I covered before, communities have cultures, tech levels, population levels, and communicate with their neighbors. This would make all tiles populated on a spectrum. Played Civilizations would just be farther to one side of the spectrum than the other, their villages/towns/cities considering themselves part of a polity. It's to replicate how villages and towns were often just as important as cities, if not more so because 80-90% of the world population lived in rural areas.

 

[Naokaukodem]

One could have communities (from an earlier idea of mine) be a base. In that thread I covered before, communities have cultures, tech levels, population levels, and communicate with their neighbors. This would make all tiles populated on a spectrum. Played Civilizations would just be farther to one side of the spectrum than the other, their villages/towns/cities considering themselves part of a polity. It's to replicate how villages and towns were often just as important as cities, if not more so because 80-90% of the world population lived in rural areas.

I call them factions. I'm not totally convinced *every* tiles should be populated, at least not by a regional standpoint. Hunters-gatherers life style needed some space and some wild, unpopulated space to move, hunt, gather, ban, send the population excedent elsewhere. That's why it could be cool that there is as many factions as there is currently civs, c-S, barbarians and tribal villages. Provided not all are agressive or cannibal. (so you can still explore a little bit - or fight much earlier)

But granted, by the time the game begins, all earth should bend under population pressure. It's why agriculture have been invented, it's my theory.

 

[civilizationfanatic2000]

I call them factions. I'm not totally convinced *every* tiles should be populated, at least not by a regional standpoint. Hunters-gatherers life style needed some space and some wild, unpopulated space to move, hunt, gather, ban, send the population excedent elsewhere. That's why it could be cool that there is as many factions as there is currently civs, c-S, barbarians and tribal villages. Provided not all are agressive or cannibal. (so you can still explore a little bit - or fight much earlier)

But granted, by the time the game begins, all earth should bend under population pressure. It's why agriculture have been invented, it's my theory.

i think only the inhabitable tiles should be populated. tundra (proper), jungle, desert, should have no humans or but a few wanderers.

 

[Patine]

i think only the inhabitable tiles should be populated. tundra (proper), jungle, desert, should have no humans or but a few wanderers.

It's amazing how many people live in jungles and deserts, and even a few (like Inuit, Chukchi, Nenets, Koryat, Selknam, and Yagham, and the former Dorset Culture) do live in tundra proper. That's more than just, "no humans but a few wanderers." Though, since I don't support, "provinces," or other solid regional map divisions, I don't it as as much of an issue.

 

[civilizationfanatic2000]

It's amazing how many people live in jungles and deserts, and even a few (like Inuit, Chukchi, Nenets, Koryat, Selknam, and Yagham, and the former Dorset Culture) do live in tundra proper. That's more than just, "no humans but a few wanderers." Though, since I don't support, "provinces," or other solid regional map divisions, I don't it as as much of an issue.

you know provinces wouldn't actually change the tiles themselves, they would just represent how the civilizations there would divide the land into easy to administrate states because tiles do not exist in universe.

also, very few people live in the tundra, and those living in the desert rely on water sources (like oasises or rivers). actually living in the deep desert away from water is impossible. i will say that 'no humans but a few wanderers' is very exaggerated, my mistake, but they should still be less organized and less populous.

 

[Naokaukodem]

i think only the inhabitable tiles should be populated. tundra (proper), jungle, desert, should have no humans or but a few wanderers.

Maybe (...) but as I said, I would, for Civ7, favorize true massive units with icons to represent the human (or animal, vegetal like it is already the case) life. Not some empty tile with "100 people" as a characteristic of the tile when you hover the cursor of the mouse on. Because IMO, Civ has always been a game of visual units, my famous "pushing units philosophy". That's also why it is simple to understand, has instinctive gameplay.

 

[BuchiTaton]

About Provinces the main limiting factor is the map itself, with relatively small maps and the odd scale were a distric take a huge part of the whole world something like explicit provinces is an administrative level difficult ot apply. After all we can see the already in-game "Cities" and the area their control as provinces. We can also abstract the map improvements as villages for example a Farm as a "farming village", a mine into a "mining village" and a lumber camp like a "lumberkjack village".

Now these villages and also the districts whatever are from a playable "main civ" or a non-playable "minor civ" (City-States and Barbarin Clans) could be related to the cultural element. The idea is that each village and district are inhabited by denizens (population unit), each of these have three "identity values"; Heritage (ethonocultural), Belief (religion) and Class (social caste), so certain conditions would force these denizens to migrate (relocate villages) and immigrate (incorporate into a district).

With this new central role of the denizens events like ideological changes, religious propagation, cultural influence, economic pressures and demographic changes (like migration-invasion-colonization) would have actual dynamic, tangible and logical causes linked to this core mechanic.

 

[civilizationfanatic2000]

About Provinces the main limiting factor is the map itself, with relatively small maps and the odd scale were a distric take a huge part of the whole world something like explicit provinces is an administrative level difficult ot apply. After all we can see the already in-game "Cities" and the area their control as provinces. We can also abstract the map improvements as villages for example a Farm as a "farming village", a mine into a "mining village" and a lumber camp like a "lumberkjack village".

Now these villages and also the districts whatever are from a playable "main civ" or a non-playable "minor civ" (City-States and Barbarin Clans) could be related to the cultural element. The idea is that each village and district are inhabited by denizens (population unit), each of these have three "identity values"; Heritage (ethonocultural), Belief (religion) and Class (social caste), so certain conditions would force these denizens to migrate (relocate villages) and immigrate (incorporate into a district).

With this new central role of the denizens events like ideological changes, religious propagation, cultural influence, economic pressures and demographic changes (like migration-invasion-colonization) would have actual dynamic, tangible and logical causes linked to this core mechanic.

could use fractal tiles to solve thaat problem