Anybody have ideas for a New Culture/Unique Ability System?

[DefiantMars]

I’ve been thinking about this topic quite a bit, but I would like to open it up to discussion.

My interest here lies in the discussing potential systems for culture/UAs, going into Civ VI. My hope is that Firaxis introduces a more dynamic approach to culture and Civ abilities. In the real world, Culture is something that is dynamic and fluid, something that evolves over time. For the Civ games then, I would like to see a form of system that allows you to tailor the effects your Civ accumulates to suit a playstyle.

To facilitate this, there are two main ideas that I had. The first being a Trait System and the other being an Ability Tree.

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Drawing heavy influence from Civ IV Civics, Alpha Centauri Social Engineering, and Beyond Earth Traits, a culture centered system could feature multiple slots or categories that a player could choose. Categories could include: Government Type, Foreign Policy, Military Tradition, views on Industry, Domestic Values, Economy Type, Religious Views/Influence, etc.

This would open up a variety of customization options that would help the player build a particular set of perks that lend itself to a playstyle of their choosing. This type of system lends itself to flexibility and would allow a player to change tactics should new conditions present themselves. On the other hand, this has the potential to reduce the level of uniqueness among civs by giving them a shared pool of options. However, giving all Civs the same choices is something that has been done in the past and if implemented alongside Unique Buildings and Unique Units, it has the potential to work. In my opinion anyway.

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With an Ability Tree, a Civ would unlock “additional” Abilities both Unique and not so Unique as the game progresses. These options could be based on their historical achievements, important cultural aspects, and the like.

From a gameplay perspective, this would also allow a Civ to build up to several playstyles over the course of the game and allow the player to react to the map and the circumstances of the game; this giving them a few more paths to victory. So instead of just being say… an Economic power, a Civ could also have the potential to be a Naval power, or have really good Espionage. On the downside, this would probably be more difficult to balance. Additionally, a method would have to be put into place that would allow a player to retroactively make changes in their set-up should the need arise.

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But those are both really rough ideas. I'm not sure if those would be the best options, but that's kind of what I'd like to see. Just more options per Civ.

Do you have any ideas?

 

[Redaxe]

The Events and Decisions Mod allows you to a do a lot of what you are talking about.

You can use culture to make decisions that effect your empire such as legal codifications etc...

 

[DudewiththeFood]

At the moment most UAs are split into two parts (e.g. spy + naval bonus for England or barbarian conversions + maintenance reduction for Germany). Each civ could have more abilities (3-4) but only one would be available at the start. Another could be unlocked at some point (possibly chronologically so Egypt get 2 from the start and America get a big one late game but I'm not sure) and then you can choose a third which only applies during golden ages. Unlike he other two, the golden age ability would scale up and if there's four choices, you could change the third each golden age.

The bonuses would scale up depending on when they get unlocked so it might be worth waiting to unlock an ability to get a stronger version of it later.


It might be worth also converting social policies and BE's traits into cultural bonuses similar to pantheons which would be more generic and find a different way of representing government.

 

[x2Madda]

The problem with Civ games, infact the rather large conundrum with them, is that they are video games that revolve around winning but because they draw from history and take a long time to win, they scratch an itch of being an empire builder but unlike sim city, you have competitors and war and a way to win eventually that isn't just 'make the bestest city evar!'.

Why do I say all this? Well, the civics system in Civ4 were fine. The policy system in Civ5 are fine. If Civ6 comes along with a new bonus system it will probably be fine. Somehow Civ:BE messed it up but a method of streamlining the older policy trees from Civ5 and remove redundancy, the intent was solid! A few changes here and there and viola, it would be fixed.

The problem with The events and decisions mod, is that their really aren't that many events or decisions to make that feel impactful. Provided you have enough gold (most of them require gold) then you would never, not take them. Civics and Policies are positive but choices need to be made and are sometimes mutually exclusive as well so it is decision making, which is interesting, as opposed to straight up boosts and bonuses with no drawback whatsoever.

Making choices that impact how the rest of the game plays out is a delicate balancing act. Straight up bonuses don't feel good in Civ games because as Civ:BE shows, you just feel like they are mandatory and if they don't trigger when you expect them (see great prophets) then it makes you feel unhappy but anything overly negative are not worth taking at all.

I want to win the game and anything that hinders my progress is something I seek to avoid so an overly negative system will go into the trash and an overly positive system is taken for granted.

That's not to say that I am the only person who matters when designing a civ game, but rather, look how many threads their are about issues like quests in Civ:BE or how rubbish some policy trees are compared to others in Civ5 and so on and so forth.

 

[Redaxe]

The problem with The events and decisions mod, is that their really aren't that many events or decisions to make that feel impactful. Provided you have enough gold (most of them require gold) then you would never, not take them. Civics and Policies are positive but choices need to be made and are sometimes mutually exclusive as well so it is decision making, which is interesting, as opposed to straight up boosts and bonuses with no drawback whatsoever.

That's half true - the genius behind the Events and Decisions Mod is not necessarily to have game changing elements but to allow you to swap things more readily.

I haven't used the mod for ages but I remember there was one if you have a christian religion that allows you to spend gold to "produce a biblical manuscript or something". You'd get a big lump sum of faith.
I like this system because it essentially you to trade currencies (gold, faith, culture etc) to get something to help your civ in another area. So that extra faith means you can now get an extra great prophet or some missionaries etc....

The Codify Laws one I also found interesting - you can trade some culture for +4 happiness and some extra golden age time. Not bad if you're in that awkward position in the game where there are no happiness policies to unlock and you don't want to unlock a social policy (for the sake of it) while you wait for Rationalism...

About the gold well that's probably a Tradition thing because Tradition gives you so much gold you have plenty left over. Play Liberty and you'll be in negative gpt for much of the game and its a lot harder to make the same decisions...

I do think that the economic system in civ 5 is woeful though but I'm at a loss to know how it should be changed without requiring a degree in economics or accounting to manage. A government system would be good (something that you can change around more often (Despotism, Monarchy, Aristocracy, Republic....), social policies on the otherhand just keep accruing... it doesn't quite make sense that you can be a theocracy and a liberal democracy now does it?)
Getting rid of global happiness would be a start. No reason why conquering Carthage should cause unhappiness in Rome....
Bring back corruption (perhaps replace the annoying unit cap production penalty with corruption)
Health and Plague is necessary (to punish early tall cities)
The economy needs to be a little less dependent on trade routes which currently tend to punish wider civs more.

 

[Redaxe]

Actually there was one other though I had - very much in its infancy though so don't take it as a work of scholarship.

Essentially you're civ would accrue Civic points as the game progresses. You'd get these points from
-finishing a social policy tree
-triggering a golden age
-switching to a new more representative government
-maybe founding a religion etc...
-Someone declaring war on you (rise in patriotism) this might give you a couple points (more if the aggresor civ is much more powerful than you)...
-certain wonders might also grant a point

You can however also lose points if your civ is in a long period of unhappiness...

You can spend these points to get your civ out of an emergency. For example.
-you can debase your currency to get a large lump sum of gold over several turns... essentially you're melting down your currency and putting less gold in each coin so you have more money to spend.
-You can conscript the population to get some immediate military units...
-Declare martial law to suppress unhappiness for several turns.
-Strip religious buildings to take gold and metal for money...
-Ban pantheon beliefs & melt down pagan idols for gold and demolish pagan shrines/temples for stone (free production)...
-Cut the wages of public servants for an increase in gpt...
-Cut the wages of soldiers for an increase in gpt although at a cost to morale...

Essentially if you have positive points it means your government is in a position of stability and you can "rock the boat" and get away with certain measures that could otherwise trigger a revolt.

If you overspend these points and it drops down to negative it represents your entire civilization crumbling from instability and hatred or apathy of government. You'll accrue culture more slowly, you'll have increased unhappiness, items get more expensive to build, buy and maintain(due to the debased currency) etc...
You can continue to spend points to try and prop yourself up but you risk digging a deeper hole. I.e you can keep debasing currency, keep enforcing martial law to eliminate unhappiness but it starts to have a deleterious effect on your civ where you cause more long term pain for some short term benefit.
Used correctly though and it might help get you out of a tight spot. A good case in history is the Roman Emperor Heraclius saving the Roman Empire from the brink of disaster by doing many of those things above. He managed to rebuild the Roman army by debasing the currency, convincing the church to give him all the gold and metal in the cathedrals, cutting the salaries of public servants. By doing this he was able to ready a new army to attack Persia and achieve victory. And this was achieved basically by a desperate government going further then ever before in to take wealth from elements normally outside of its control to spend on military expenditure. In the end it was only tolerated because the East Roman people still had enough faith in their leadership and government to tolerate some pain. That level of tolerance is dictated by the civic points, if they start dropping into the negative citizens basically just no longer care - they'd be just as happy serving a foreign warlord... Essentially it does give you the tools to play the role of a tyrant if you want to be a Nero or a Commodus.

If your points drop into negative enacting these decisions will really start to punish you. I.e cutting the army salary might trigger mutinies(units might turn barbarian), cutting public service salaries would cause an increase in corruption, debasing currency would cause inflation and a drop in productivity, martial law could trigger a citywide demonstration or eventually revolt...

 

[DefiantMars]

I just... really like that Religion in Civ 5 can be used to emphasized a particular style or benefit and it grows over time. CBP for example shows the breadth of what could be done. Really what I would like to see that be a bit more inherent in a Civ.