What about a revamped corruption system? Let me give it a shot:
Cultural identity radious
- The further a city is located from your capital, the more it looses its cultural identity, in a similar fashion of how the corruption system worked back in the day
- However, the loss of cultural identity would just consist in a penalty to the city's culture and science output, leaving gold and production output unscratched
- That would replicate the whole "Metropolis VS colony" historic mechanic. Scientific discoveries and cultural archievements will come from the metropolis, while colonies will be used as tools to project power (producing and healing units) and gain wealth.
- That way, wide empires wouldn't have a technological advantage over tall ones, forcing big empires to have their own house (core) in order before starting expanding and colonizing
- That would also mean that tile adquisition in oversea territories will require gold, since culture production would amount to nil in the colonies. That lack of culture output will leave said colonies heavily vulnerable to cultural assimilation by the native civs of said continent (since these pesky colonies would be on their backyard), which could create really interesting scenarios of assimilation and revolts, me thinks
Seems quite interesting . Another idea that could work together with it can be about Social order and Popular influence over the government . It would work like this:
- There is a bar at the top of the screen indicating the state of the "Social order" . It's divide between the Red half(where the risk of being in anarchy or losing your cities is very high),the Green half(where you receive advantages,such as cheaper golden ages for example),and the Neutral part,where nothing special happen .
- Social order differ from "Happiness",due to the fact it's quite more complex . While Happiness is somehow more a static concept,Social order is dynamic concept,that can be changed by lots of things;
- SOQ(abbreviated from "Social Order Quests") range can be from local(build a specific building or allocate a military unit) or general(build a connection between cities,completes a quest of some city-state,build a National/World Wonder,etc.) and its difficulty depends on the game difficulty and on the number of the players at the game . For practical purposes,positive SO points are SO+ and SO- are negative ones .
- Divison between local SOQ and general SOQ may exist in a city that has a divergent culture of your Capital . The more cities with a divergent culture from the capital you have,the higher is the chance that you receive two contradictory general SOQ .
- To get SO+,you'll have to do things that makes your
proud of your government,such as winning a war or get rid of some cities,for example .
- The size and the cultural diversity of your empire defines the ammount of quests,its difficulty and its range . Each annexed/settled city into your empire increases your need for more "Social Order" points,in order to make sure such city will not become a rebel . Warmongers have three options here(that differs slightly from Civ5) :
1)Annex the captured city . Such option difficults the healing rate of your units and may make this city demands a contradictory quests of the Metropolis(unless you get "Police state" social policy,and allocate a military or police unit(details below) there);
2)Make it successfully surrender and then becomes its Vassal . You'll lose control of the city over time,but you receive some gold and possibly,even a free production bonus . And your troops will heal at the
3)Burn the city to the ground . By doing that,the chance that a unprotected city to become your Vassal,but beware,consequences may be too harsh .
- Popular influence over the government can also be controlled . Such thing defines the ammount and the range of the quests you may receive . Having too few popular influence increases culture requirement for adopting a new policy,while having too much popular influence may overwork you with too many quests .
- Current Social policies here define what kind of question you may receive . Examples for Social policy openers are:
- Freedom: Receives more General SOQ when increasing popular participation(but less local SOQ) and receives SO+ for every Great person born in your empire;
- Autocracy:gives SO+ everytime you promote persecution over a cultural minority,an even bigger SO+ everytime you execute part of a chased cultural minority and a free golden age,if you successfully wiped them out of this planet;
- Order: When you increase popular participation,the number of SOQ will increase less and you'll receive only local SOQ . The "Green half" of the Social policy bar is slightly expanded as well .
Along with those features,there is also a special unit called Police unit,unlocked with a "Industrial era" technology . Such unit can work as a "counter-spy",decreasing spy's efficiency and can also be used to suppress cultural minorities,although there is a chance that you may receive SO- when doing so . With Police state,you can also use Police unit to suppress resistance from annexed cities or Military unit,but using the latter one may cause the
to reduce);
cost by 15%. so actually ciV uses a combination of cultural and happiness penalty to limit a large empire.
