Techs/Civics spreading like religions

[Popish Frenzy]

Was thinking about the never ending wide vs tall debate and it occurred to me that one way to differentiate between the two would be to have a tech and civic propagation mechanic. Once a tech or civic is researched it would spread like a pantheon/religion across your empire from the city of origin (capital or maybe city w. highest science) to neighboring cities following roads. As it diffuses it would bring the ability to build its units, buildings and improvements exactly like religions unlock units and buildings. Policies would only apply their effects to cities where the civics has reached. And adopting government types whose civics haven't spread to your whole empire would cause happiness and loyalty penalties in the cities that lack those ideas. Ideas could also spread to neighboring Civs with traders, giving them a small eureka style boost to research. Great people could be used to target specific cities like secular missionaries.

Naturally tall, well connected Civs would gain an advantage as ideas would spread quickest across their empires.This would reflect history as small states would often be able to compete with larger ones by having more efficient bureaucracies and unified populations. Edit: Civs where ideas are not fully spread would also receive research penalties, increasing with the amount of backwater cities they have. This would also indirectly penalize Civs focusing too heavily on science or culture.

The mechanic would also neatly seg into ideologies in the late game. Most tech and civics would not compete with each other, a city having an 'idea' would just be binary. But late game governments (democracy, communism etc) would act more like religions, competing for followers inside your cities and within rival empires . Adopting unpopular late game government types would trigger more serious penalties like civil wars or secessionist movements.

Don't know if this is currently moddable. I think it would mostly use existing systems but it would need significant UI changes to be playable.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Interesting. The problem is though that such techs and ideas didn't make so much time to expand, at least when Civ begins and considering the actual time a turn is. This actually ties to the yet non existing "debate" of spreading slowly VS instant spreading. It's a problem due to the time an actual turn lasts, and also due to the period covered. If we started with pre-Sapiens "humankind", it would make perfect sense. But even in the old times of Rome empire, in 50 years the discoveries were instantly spread in the empire. (1 turn) You can see it also when you observe the discovered tiles, if a civ in the "grey out" zone starts a wonder, you can see it immediately.

However this could be good for different civs. Keeping in mind that discoveries are jealously kept the most secret possible, and the barriers of frontiers, languages and cultures. In fact, it was already represented in Civ5, where the techs, the more discovered by the more civs, where cheaper. Thing is : not by a lot. We could make such a system taking more importance, to try to simulate the actual world : domination of a continent composed with a lot of middle-sized countries, VS isolated or more isolated countries. Obviously, it would not be that cool if YOU are the isolated one... it's already crippling in current games, so if there's another factor increasing it... unless we start all isolated, like having the choice between european civ, asian civ, etc. (a handful) and that the goal is to reach ocean sailing first and more or less maybe conquer everyone, military first, culturally next.

 

[AsH2]

I'm also for (pro) organic Techs/Civics spreading (instead of current "isolation ftw" situation).
Check out Tech Tree Revision and Ideas for The Perfect 4X Historical Game

 

[Naokaukodem]

@AsH2 Indeed we could go that way for pure gameplay purpose, neglecting realism. It's not like Civ is realistic anyway. That's why I said such an idea is interesting put in that form. That makes me think that I had an idea thinking about it. Wait what ? Did I just forget it ? Come on... I need a cigarette.

 

[AsH2]

To paraphrase @Boris Gudenuf .. "Civics ain't easily adopted, while Techs are if needed."
My first thoughts about this were to tie Civics to clusters of population (make it "Tradtions"-like) and semi-tie Techs to it - Techs spread would also bring Civics.