ANTIQUITY
Overall Focus = A handful of cities and heroes vying for influence, notoriety, and regional control. This has implications both internally and externally for each civ. There should be less empire-management and more city-management, as well as more focus on specific units and commanders. Think of the old Fall From Heaven mod and the Heroes module for CivVI but with a more realistic flavor. Think quests and feats rather than wide-ranging campaigns. This should be history, but history that could easily become legend and myth.
Pt 1 - Foundational Changes
As a general rule, I believe that techs should represent tangible/practical advancements in tools and methods, while civics should represent intangible behaviors and organizational systems. Pursuing the Science Legacy Path should require almost exclusive focus on the tech tree, while pursuing the Culture Legacy Path should require almost exclusive focus on the civics tree. Pursuing the Military and Economy Legacy Paths should require a mix, with Military slanted more toward techs and Economy slanted more toward civics. Most (but not all) units should be in the tech tree; most (but not all) policies should be in the civics tree; buildings and wonders should be spread across both, but as in the current game, buildings can be slanted more toward techs while wonders are slanted more toward civics.
In order to bring about more consistency and cohesion to the Antiquity era, I suggest the following changes to the tech and civics trees.
Techs (16 techs total, same as current game)
- Masonry requires both Pottery and Animal Husbandry
- Mathematics requires Currency and Bronze Working
- Military Training is renamed Siegecraft
- Siegecraft requires Mathematics and the Wheel
- Iron Working requires Mathematics
- Engineering requires Iron Working and Siegecraft
- Future Tech requires Engineering and Navigation (no other dead ends)
- Archer moves to Mathematics to further distance from Slinger use
- Ballista moves to Siegecraft
- Bath moves out of the tech tree to a civic
- Monument moves out of the tech tree to a civic
- Villa moves out of the tech tree to a civic
- Amphitheater moves to Masonry to facilitate the Science Legacy Path
- Arena moves to Engineering
- Colossus moves to Bronze Working
- Coinage moves to Currency
The end result will be that the final high-value techs for Antiquity are Iron Working, Siegecraft, Engineering, and Navigation - all of which are capable of significantly upgrading the power of the military and production overall. Think Iron-age vs Bronze-age. The tech costs for these final techs may also need an increase to ensure that there is enough Bronze-age gameplay before they displace it.
Civics (14 civics total, same as current game)
- New civic Logic in slot occupied by Discipline
- Discipline requires Logic
- Survey moves to Logic, but Logic needs additional benefits to be worthwhile, especially as a Mastery
- Tactics requires Discipline
- Public Life requires Citizenship and Tactics, not Mysticism
- New civic Drama requires Mysticism
- New civic Tradition requires Drama
- Philosophy requires Citizenship and Tradition, not Literacy
- Literacy requires Philosophy
- Commerce requires Public Life
- Future Civic requires Literacy and Commerce (no other dead ends)
- Organized Military and Skilled Trades are deleted, their contents moved
- Bath moves to Public Life
- Monument moves to Tradition
- Villa moves to Citizenship
- Drama and Poetry moves to Drama
- Cultural Festival moves to Tradition
- Improve Trade Relations moves to Commerce
- Rites and Rituals moves to Tradition
- Conscription moves to Public Life
- +1 Settlement Limit moves to Citizenship
- Mausoleum of Theodoric moves to Tactics
- Oracle moves to Drama
- Colossus moves out of civics to a tech
- Coinage moves out of civics to a tech
The end results will be that the final high-value civics for Antiquity are Philosophy, Literacy, Public Life, Commerce, and Future Civic. Like the late-Antiquity techs, these are all designed to overpower existing mechanisms/strategies.
Pt 2 - Growth and Organization
Perhaps the most dramatic single change, I propose that
players cannot build Settlers in Antiquity (unless like Carthage, they have a unique playstyle and a unique unit that enables it). As a result, players cannot found Settlements or specialize them. Instead, additional Founder units are generated by accomplishments (maybe certain legacy-path milestones), enabling Cities to spawn other Cities every so often, but at a slower rate and in a less directed way.
Perhaps there would also a requirement that keeps new Cities not only a certain number of tiles apart but also within a certain number of tiles from another City that the player owns.
The result would be that each civ in Antiquity will end up as a cluster of cities in a localized region of the map. Expanding far will require special rules (a greater maximum distance or the ability to build Settlements), the conquest of neighbors, or a lot of work to deliberately generate the maximum number of Founders. It could also be viable to have a civ that focuses on a single massive powerful City and doesn’t expand at all.
As in the current game, mountains and deep oceans should be impassible, creating limitations on map exploration. Alternatively (or in addition), there could be some type of degradation for units that remain too far outside their home territory. This would again result in limited exploration/expansion, but with a variety of limitations that could each be altered by unique traits or units, as well as by techs/civics.
Pt 3 - Science Legacy Path
Title =
The Great Library
Goal = Collect and house 10 codices
Milestone 1 = Build an Amphitheater - Masonry tech
+ 1 Scientific Legacy Point
+ 1 Founder unit
Milestone 2 = Build a Library - Writing tech
+ 1 Scientific Legacy Point
+ 1 Scientific Attribute
+ 1 Founder unit
Milestone 3 = Collect 10 codices
+ 1 Scientific Legacy Point
+ 1 Founder unit
+ Golden Age Academies
Victory (if turned on for game-end in Antiquity) = Build, fill Great Library wonder - Engineering tech
Codices can be displayed as follows:
x1 in Palace
x2 per Library - Writing tech
x3 per Academy - Mathematics tech
x2 in Nalanda wonder - Literacy civic
x4 in Great Library wonder - Engineering tech
NOTE: To make this work, the Amphitheater building needs to move to Masonry, replacing the Monument (which can in turn move to the Tradition civic and play a significant role in the Military Legacy Path for Antiquity). The idea here is that we need a place to give speeches, and the Amphitheater seems the most ideal building choice.
Like the current game, science play in Antiquity would center on the collection of codices, but
I suggest making the collection much more interactive and thematic.
To start, codices should not be gained by unlocking techs. They could still be gained on occasion through a narrative event here or there, but the primary way they are gained should be
through Philosophers or through pillaging/conquest. Philosophers should generate as a unit at random on owned tiles, and their chance of generating should increase based on certain conditions that could inspire philosophical thinking: attractiveness of the tile and proximity to a natural wonder, proximity to a natural disaster, proximity to a library or trade building, proximity to a world wonder, etc. Perhaps to keep a connection to the tech tree, Philosophers can only generate on a turn when a tech is unlocked.
When a Philosopher does generate, it would need to be taken to a certain building to activate - an Amphitheater. When activated, the Philosopher will disappear and generate a codex. The codex will then need to be stored in an appropriate building - a Palace, Library, Academy, or specific wonder, just as in the current game.
But why would anyone want to collect codices if they weren’t pursuing the Science Legacy Path? In order to incentivize this and make the science gameplay more interesting, what if each codex provided some type of special bonus, along the lines of a wonder effect that specifically affects the city where the codex is housed. There could be a dozen effects or so, and if you ended up with duplicates, they could be designed to stack. Because of this, even if you weren’t pursuing a full collection, grabbing a few would always be worthwhile.
In addition, codices could be traded via diplomacy. This would be only available with certain tech unlocks and a close relationship between the civs. The benefit is that players wouldn’t lose codices by trading them; the idea is that the knowledge is shared/copied, not lost in the transfer. To gain access to a codex would either require trading access to your own codex or paying a very significant fee in money or resources.
Finally, codices could be captured via pillaging or conquering a tile where one is housed. In this situation, the original owner would lose their copy of the codex. To keep pillaging from being too easy a way to gain codices, it might be necessary to convert the codex into a treasure unit that needs to be taken to a home City before it becomes available to the pillaging civ.
The result of all this should be a gameplay focus where the scientific player is intentionally racing through the tech tree, while exploring/expanding to claim tiles near attractive or interesting geographic features (maybe taking on some risk in the process), and choosing buildings and wonders that will inspire/house the codices they need. Maybe they’ll seek out friends that also value science so that they can boost their collection through trade; maybe they’ll get aggressive and try to steal codices from their neighbors. The “eureka” type spontaneity of discovery would exist through the random generation of Philosophers, but the probability could be manipulated enough to satisfy the strategic player. There would also be the random element of codex effects, which a player couldn’t predict but which could pivot their strategy multiple times per game.
What would happen to all the codices after Antiquity? The general idea should be that they become rare semi-powerful tokens from a lost age, the sort of thing that would get secreted away and become the stuff of legend. To this end, no more Philosophers would generate after Antiquity ends, and any Philosophers or unhoused codices at the age transition would be deleted. In order to further phase them out, I would suggest that pillaging or conquering no longer automatically results in stealing a codex; instead, pillaging or conquering would have a 50% change to destroy the codex. Codices could also be destroyed by natural disasters. By the Modern era, any surviving codices would count as artifacts for use in museums for the Culture Legacy Path. As a result, a player aiming for the Culture Legacy Path in the Modern era would want to focus on science in Antiquity to ensure that they can preserve a large supply of codices for their museums.
Pt 4 - Culture Legacy Path
Title =
Wonders of the Ancient World
Goal = Build 7 Wonders for the Glory of the Gods
Milestone 1 = Build an Altar - Mysticism
+ 1 Cultural Legacy Point
+ 1 Founder unit
Milestone 2 = Complete 3 Cultural Festivals - Tradition
+ 1 Cultural Legacy Point
+ 1 Founder unit
+ 1 Cultural Attribute
Milestone 3 = Build 7 wonders - various techs and civics
+ 1 Cultural Legacy Point
+ 1 Founder unit
+ Golden Age Altars
Victory (if turned on for game-end in Antiquity) = Complete the (new) Epic Tradition project - Literacy civic
While largely similar to the current-game goal of building 7 world wonders, I suggest integrating the creation and organization of pantheons into this legacy path, as well as the repeated hosting of Cultural Festivals. The idea is that these wonders, dedicated to your civ’s pantheon, are focal points for celebrating your unique culture and enshrining your heritage. You then cap it all off by producing a literary epic, an origin story that passes along your society’s beliefs, values, and traditions to future generations.
As a foundation for all this, the Altar should be changed to include a significant boost to wonder production. To offset this bonus, and to make altars almost essential for wonder production, the cost of all wonders could be proportionately increased. Wonders can certainly be built without a sense of civic religion, but as we see in much of the ancient world, piety can serve as a powerful mobilizer for big expensive art projects.
The second milestone is to complete 3 Cultural Festivals (the number changing maybe according to game speed). In the current game, the Cultural Festival project is ongoing until cancelled, but for this to work, it would need to have a specific span of turns to complete each time it is activated. This also makes sense, as a festival usually has a start and end and doesn’t just go on forever. My suggestion would be that every Cultural Festival automatically run for at least 5 turns and be based on a progressive production cost, much like the Theater Square Festival project in Civ VI.
The third milestone is, of course, the wonders themselves. These can be built at any time in any of the civ’s Cities. They should also be able to be captured by aggressive players as part of conquering a neighboring City.
The utility of the wonders and altars in future ages is already inherent. Their abilities have value to both players pursuing the Culture Legacy Path and to players just dabbling in this area. Wonders also continue to have their effects as the eras transition, ensuring their long-term value. Moreover, the Epic that you produce as a final project could transfer into the next two eras as an automatic Great Work of Writing in your collection.
An additional intriguing idea is to replace Golden Amphitheaters with Golden Altars. A civ that creates such a grand identity in Antiquity could retain a stronger tie to their traditional pantheon in the next era, even alongside the growth of a world religion when other pantheons are rendered obsolete.
In the end, culture gameplay ends up balanced with similar elements to science gameplay - the cultural player will race through the civics tree to get access first to pantheon options, then to preferred wonders ahead of their opponents. If they can't win that race, the player may choose to attack neighbors in order to gain control of what they need. While they won’t be trying to influence or react to any random generation (probably a plus for some players), they will be trying to compete for wonder construction and puzzle them into place around their Cities, while also balancing the need to host those Cultural Festivals.
Pt 5 - Economy Legacy Path
Title =
Silk Road
Goal = Access and assign 20 resources to your Cities
Milestone 1 = Build a Market - Currency tech
+ 1 Economic Legacy Point
+ 1 Founder unit
Milestone 2 = Establish 4 trade routes - Code of Laws civic
+ 1 Economic Legacy Point
+ 1 Founder unit
+ 1 Economic Attribute
Milestone 3 = Access and assign 20 resources
+ 1 Economic Legacy Point
+ 1 Founder unit
+ Golden Age Markets
Victory = Complete the Silk Road project and establish a Trade Agreement with 1 distant civ
NOTE: The current game’s Golden Age bonus of keeping cities as cities and not downgrading them to settlements doesn’t apply with this framework. Antiquity Cities are hard-won, most civs will only have a few, and all should carry over into the Exploration Age. For this reason, instead I propose Golden Age Markets, which will automatically increase the number of resource slots entering the Exploration era.
The Economy Legacy Path is again very similar to the one in the current game, but I propose adding a little more emphasis on the idea of your civ connecting the known world.
The first milestone is simple - just build a Market. In order to do this, the player will also need to unlock the Merchant unit, which will also automatically generate one for free. This, combined with the Founder provided by the milestone, will set the player up for success further down this legacy path.
The second milestone is to establish a certain number of trade routes. While I’m not sure of the exact number, it should be enough to require a deliberate effort, including multiple uses of the Improve Trade Relations endeavor.
As with the Science and Culture Legacy Paths, the third milestone is a big jump in difficulty, requiring the player to acquire and assign the full 20 resources to their Cities.
All resources would be treated/acquired in five ways. First, you could build a City in range of the resource and work it normally as a rural district. Second, you could establish a trade route to acquire the resource from a city that is working it. Third, given the necessary tech and civic unlocks, you should be able to trade or purchase access to a resource through diplomacy. Fourth, you could conquer a City with the resource you want. Fifth and finally, the new way to gain resources would be via pillaging.
Pillaging a resource tile should result in a treasure unit that will provide the resource for a certain number of turns when it is returned to one of your Cities. Pillaging a tile that has no resource attached would still result in the current-game pillaging reward.
As a result, ancient raiding parties would now have the ability to gain long-term bonuses and treasures for their civs, again enriching those core Cities with the wealth of foreign lands and using it to build wonders etc.
Because this legacy path is more straight-forward, I suggest adding an extra civic-unlockable Market bonus for an additional momentum/thematic element that will activate during the collection of these 20 resources. Maybe some type of increased Gold yield for each unique resource that is assigned to the City. Maybe there could also be some type of Influence yield for each assigned resource that comes via a trade route. This way, your Markets becomes more and more powerful as you build your civ’s trade influence.
For an economic victory to wrap up the legacy path in Antiquity, I would suggest a new project called The Silk Road. In order to start the project, one of your Cities must have 10 assigned resources. Completing the project will generate a unique Explorer unit, who is capable of crossing mountains and deep ocean (the only such unit in Antiquity)! When the Explorer reaches a distant City, it will be able to use the Establish Trade Agreement action to win the game.
Since the distant lands and civs exist from the start of the game but aren’t accessible until the Exploration Age, this would create a use for them even for players who aren’t continuing to the next era. It also would feel like a true world-changing accomplishment, opening up a new global reality through your ever-expanding trade network.
As stated, out of all the legacy paths, the Economy one is the most straight-forward. While still a challenge, the only true variable is the map, the precise locations of resources and foreign Cities. This should appeal to more structured players, while still being thematic enough for casual players to enjoy. It should be satisfying for players both pursuing and simply dabbling in this legacy path to see their Markets' yields grow and the wealth come rolling in as they add more and more resources to their supply.
Pt 6 - Military Legacy Path
Title =
The First Triumvirate
Goal = Fully level up 3 Heroes
Milestone 1 = Complete the Sacred Stories project - Drama civic
+ 1 Military Legacy Point
+ 1 Founder unit
Milestone 2 = Build a Monument - Public Life civic
+ 1 Military Legacy Point
+ 1 Founder unit
+ 1 Military Attribute
Milestone 3 = Award 6 promotions for each of 3 Heroes
+ 1 Military Legacy Point
+ 1 Founder unit
+ Golden Age Monuments
Victory = Build the Mausoleum of Theodoric and Retire 3 Heroes
Military play in Antiquity could uniquely center on those heroes of either history or myth that achieve fame not necessarily through conquest but through a variety of feats.
While this could simply use the existing Army Commander unit, I think it might be more interesting to make a new Hero unit, whose actions and promotions could encompass a wider range of heroic behaviors. At the age transition to Exploration, each surviving Hero would be automatically replaced by an Army Commander with a bonus amount of XP relative to (but less than) how many promotions it had in Antiquity, and each Hero with a certain number of promotions could automatically generate 1 Relic.
For the new Hero promotion trees, I suggest 3 main paths: as a leader of armies, as a warrior, and as a scout.
The Military Legacy Path would center on gaining 3 of these Hero units and getting enough XP to assign them each 6 promotions/perks. I would make these promotions interesting and powerful - the ability to heal outside your borders, the ability to go far beyond your borders without taking damage, the ability to attack twice in one turn, the ability to hide from enemy units when health drops beyond a certain point, the ability to create a resource on a tile, the ability to remove a resource from a tile, etc. It would make sense to revisit many of the special abilities of the Heroes from the Civ 6 game mode.
The first milestone in the Military Legacy Path would be completing the new project Sacred Stories. This will generate your first Hero unit.
An additional Hero will generate based on the amount of XP that you earn for your existing Heroes. The amount needed should increase significantly each time to ensure that a player can’t easily create tons of Hero units, but getting 3 should be pretty viable by the middle of the Antiquity Age.
The second milestone would be when you build your first Monument. In addition to its normal yields, the Monument would have new functionality as a respawn point for any Heroes that you have generated. If the player loses a Hero without a Monument, then the Hero will not respawn until a Monument is built. Thematically, you could look at this in two ways - either as the injured Hero returning home to recover, or as a new Hero emerging, having been inspired by the one who recently died.
The third milestone would be awarding 6 promotions to each of 3 Heroes.
If the game is set to end in Antiquity, having 6 promotions would unlock the unit ability Retire. This ability will only work on a tile occupied by the wonder Mausoleum of Theodoric. To win, the player will need to build this wonder, and Retire 3 Heroes on that tile.
In the end, there’s a lot of flexibility with the Military Legacy Path. The player can have a minimal military and let their Heroes adventure independently or they can generate armies for their Heroes to lead, they can focus on bonze-age techs or beeline for the iron-age, they can war against their neighbors or just focus on independents/barbarians.
It might be interesting to even have a mod or game mode that adds specific narrative-event quests and barbarian boss fights to Antiquity. These could be designed to get your Heroes to seek out rumored locations beyond your borders and defeat powerful foes (man or beast).
Pt 7 - Final Summary for Antiquity
So, what's the end picture for Antiquity?
In the Antiquity game, we would have small clusters of Cities across the map, with more space between the borders of civs. As a result, there would be more of a sense of distance and possibly a greater presence of independent/barabarian activity in those unclaimed regions. Venturing far outside your home territory would be dangerous and even impossible for many units. This would all feel very different from the later eras, where borders are shared, where expansion is deliberately prioritized through Settlers, and where empire management takes priority.
We would have players actively doing the following:
- seeking out interesting/hazardous terrain to generate Philosophers (instead of avoiding or ignoring it)
- collecting and negotiating/fighting to acquire the abilities of codices (instead of letting them passively generate while teching)
- deliberately founding pantheons and building Altars (instead of just checking it off as part of going through the civics tree or filling districts)
- laying out Cities to accommodate wonders and prioritizing their construction to get them ahead of opponents (pretty much like the current game)
- maximizing resource slots and seeking out resources, locally (as in the current game) but also in foreign lands (to now gain through negotiation or pillaging)
- sending out Hero units to deliberately gain XP by whatever means the player chooses (the "Commander" unit and its experience becomes an end in itself instead of a new tool that the player is advised to use when convenient)
And for games ending in Antiquity, the whole thing would climax with one of the following massive and thematic achievements:
- The collection of powerful and hard-won codices from around the world in a Great Library
- The enshrinement of a civ's beliefs, celebrations, and wonders in a timeless Epic Tradition that will presumably be passed down for ages to come
- The expansion of trade and influence beyond the bounds of the known world, essentially opening up a whole new future (even if it won't be played out)
- The memorialization of Heroes, whose adventures will presumably inspire future generations
Looking back at past playthroughs, players will remember their experiencing getting and using their favorite codex powers, finding the perfect spot for a certain wonder, racing to find a new civ in distant lands, and the unique adventures of their Heroes where they used specific promotion abilities in specific situations.
Would there still be issues with doing the same thing every game? I'm not sure; in each legacy path, there would be elements that are different/unique to each game/playthrough, much more than currently:
- You wouldn't know which codex abilities you'd get, in what order, or exactly when. Every one of those things can have massive effect on the rest of your game. In the current game, you just beeline for the techs you know will give you a generic codex and bank them; it's the same track and the same steps every time, and nothing that you do has any affect on the rest of your gameplay.
- You wouldn't know exactly where you could place each wonder you want until you see the map, or if you can get them in time. You could also choose different wonders to focus on. This is very much like the current game, but the integration of the pantheon and Culture Festivals means that the player has more to think about and to balance around all the wonder construction.
- You wouldn't know the locations and types of resources that are easily available to you until you see the map. While this is much like the current game, you would have the added possibility of resources being pillaged by you or by an opponent, as well as the potential for end-game exploration into totally new map areas.
- You wouldn't be able to predict the battles that your Heroes will fight or the locations where they will take place. You also would have the option of choosing/prioritizing different promotions in different games; this would have massive implications on gameplay. In the current game, the focus is on founding and taking over cities, essentially the same as in every other era.
In each path, we would also get rid of the issue where every new milestone in the legacy path is just doing more of what you are already doing. Now there are different things to focus on at different moments in the game, and these milestones stack toward your goal as distinct steps that need to be completed.
