Automatic no closed borders like civ 6

[Hieronimous Bosch]

I would suggest, if never (I don't think) already proposed, a feature like civ 6 where borders do not close until some tech are researched.
I've never played civ6, just saw tons of gameplays, but that mechanism seems very reasonable to me.
What do you think?

 

[andersw]

I would suggest, if never (I don't think) already proposed, a feature like civ 6 where borders do not close until some tech are researched.
I've never played civ6, just saw tons of gameplays, but that mechanism seems very reasonable to me.
What do you think?

In the early game, borders are so small you can easily walk around and scout (atleast until scout units gets nerfed).
Its mostly classic and medieval era where you are locked out but if you aquire vassals before this you WILL have open borders to them.
What is it more specifically that you want to achieve and what is the real issue?

 

[Gen.Washington]

In the early game, borders are so small you can easily walk around and scout (atleast until scout units gets nerfed).
Its mostly classic and medieval era where you are locked out but if you aquire vassals before this you WILL have open borders to them.
What is it more specifically that you want to achieve and what is the real issue?

borders still routinely block off chokepoints, peninsulas, and coastal routes in my games.

 

[Hieronimous Bosch]

borders still routinely block off chokepoints, peninsulas, and coastal routes in my games.

Yes, exactly this.
I think exploration is the core game in early turns, and both for the player and ai this would help and make sense, especially in maps with lots of islands, narrow chockepoints, or small ones.
I guess in 4000 bc borders were not so secure.

 

[azum4roll]

This will allow settlers to walk right through your territory and settle in your backyard.

 

[andersw]

This will allow settlers to walk right through your territory and settle in your backyard.

It will also allow the human player to fill AI lands with warriors for cheeze under some circumstances and AI will walk in human lands and annoy/block your units.

 

[Citron]

Filling ai lands with units is expensive with little reward to justify it

 

[detroitrex]

what if:
1. you can pass through but not end your turn within another civ's borders
(alternative 1b. what if only recon units specifically had that ability?)
and 2. the tiles immediately adjacent to cities are no-go zones as how borders function now?
(2b. scale the exclusion zone to city firing range, so a second tile radius added with walls)
3. Forts lock down adjacent tiles as well so with effort you can seal up early/cut chokepoints
4. at some later tech, borders function as they do now (where exactly is an exercise left to the reader)

in real life(I know but bear with me) ancient civs direct control over a patch of ground was directly proportionate to tech (or buildings/TI, I guess, but that's really more like tech-once-removed). And it's really freaking annoying to get a scout "landlocked" somewhere because borders expanded behind him. Scouts at least should be able to skip through somewhere in the wilderness not directly locked down with a garrison or sail across undefended seas.

 

[Gen.Washington]

Give scouts a promotion to ignore borders.

 

[jarcast2]

what if:
1. you can pass through but not end your turn within another civ's borders

There is already available the game option in (1) Community Patch.
I enabled it and I never saw a stuck recon again.

<!-- relax territory check, if active units can always pass through foreign territory if they don't end the turn -->
        <Row Class="5" Name="CORE_RELAXED_BORDER_CHECK" Value="0"/>

 

[HeroOfTheSword]

what if:
1. you can pass through but not end your turn within another civ's borders
(alternative 1b. what if only recon units specifically had that ability?)
and 2. the tiles immediately adjacent to cities are no-go zones as how borders function now?
(2b. scale the exclusion zone to city firing range, so a second tile radius added with walls)
3. Forts lock down adjacent tiles as well so with effort you can seal up early/cut chokepoints
4. at some later tech, borders function as they do now (where exactly is an exercise left to the reader)

in real life(I know but bear with me) ancient civs direct control over a patch of ground was directly proportionate to tech (or buildings/TI, I guess, but that's really more like tech-once-removed). And it's really freaking annoying to get a scout "landlocked" somewhere because borders expanded behind him. Scouts at least should be able to skip through somewhere in the wilderness not directly locked down with a garrison or sail across undefended seas.

If you don't like the scout being landlocked, I highly recommend this mod https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/free-recon-units.636589/

 

[balparmak]

I like the idea, but understand the concerns and the amount of work needed to be done for what seems to offer little benefit. I still think it's worthy, anything that can differentiate eras better is a win in my book.

Also I don't see an issue with backyard settling as long as the AI can defend it, and the AI should be smart enough to do that already. It shouldn't be that different than forward settling logic.

Edit: About camping on AI tiles: units on foreign tiles can be simply kicked out upon declaration of war, I think that's the default behavior with open borders right? Gamey, sure, but it's an established genre jank now and we already have it in game, so not a big deal for me. We can also have them suffer from attrition when they're kicked out (big penalty) or every turn spent on foreign tile (small). We already have the code for the latter, currently applies only on hostile tiles, can be easily modified for neutral ones. Making city and fort adjacent tiles impassable would also add more flavor to them.

Sure it needs a lot of testing and polishing* before implementation, so if anyone modmods it, you have one tester here.

*Probably we'd need to differentiate between passable and impassable tiles. A lighter shade of civ color could work, not sure if the UI allows it though. That's my main concern, have no idea how border rendering works, it may be one of the many visual elements we can't mod.

 

[andersw]

I like the idea, but understand the concerns and the amount of work needed to be done for what seems to offer little benefit. I still think it's worthy, anything that can differentiate eras better is a win in my book.

Also I don't see an issue with backyard settling as long as the AI can defend it, and the AI should be smart enough to do that already. It shouldn't be that different than forward settling logic.

Edit: About camping on AI tiles: units on foreign tiles can be simply kicked out upon declaration of war, I think that's the default behavior with open borders right? Gamey, sure, but it's an established genre jank now and we already have it in game, so not a big deal for me. We can also have them suffer from attrition when they're kicked out (big penalty) or every turn spent on foreign tile (small). We already have the code for the latter, currently applies only on hostile tiles, can be easily modified for neutral ones. Making city and fort adjacent tiles impassable would also add more flavor to them.

Sure it needs a lot of testing and polishing* before implementation, so if anyone modmods it, you have one tester here.

*Probably we'd need to differentiate between passable and impassable tiles. A lighter shade of civ color could work, not sure if the UI allows it though. That's my main concern, have no idea how border rendering works, it may be one of the many visual elements we can't mod.

Its more if there is an AI vs AI war and I go in and block paths for one or both because of free open borders which ofc is an option to not abuse. Dont need many units to mess up pathing.
Worse is I really really dislike AI units randomly walking in my lands standing in the way and even now AI scouts can annoy when they observe in certain neutral tiles near my wars messing up my combat line so I have to purchase extra tiles.
If the limit is "cant end turn inside borders" yes thats fine but probably much more complicated to code?

 

[Tekamthi]

related idea re: peace treaty being unavailable until tech researched:

Thread 'ancient era war/peace'

Mar 28, 2025

a civ/VP thought experiment... what if all civs started at war rather than peace?

to make this work, we'd maybe need a few additional conditions:

1. war weariness is disabled until a peace treaty has been broken (ie these initial wars dont incur any weariness, only wars between civs that previously had a peace agreement incur weariness) OR game advances to renaissance era (or first discovery of printing press)
2. to make a peace treaty for the first time, one civ must have discovered at least one the opponent's cities
3. AI adjusted to seek initial peace only for specific purpose...

• Tekamthi
• Replies: 4
• Forum: Community Patch Project

• 

OP idea makes sense to me

It will also allow the human player to fill AI lands with warriors for cheeze under some circumstances and AI will walk in human lands and annoy/block your units.

i think war dec would solve this and make ancient wars more important. we finish ahead imo

 

[saamohod]

Somewhat related to the topic.
I like a lot the concept of Cold War - which is neither Peace nor proper War, but something in between - implemented by Amplitude in Endless Legend and probably some other games.

By default two nations start in Cold War, which means:

1. You can enter their territory, but they can attack you without declaring war on you. You cannot while you're there; you need DoW for that.
2. You both can attack each other in neutral territory, without DoW.

 

[Tekamthi]

You can enter their territory, but they can attack you without declaring war on you

there is a column in promotions table that *should* allow for this but last i checked its not functioning as expected -- iirc it worked in vanilla. see https://github.com/LoneGazebo/Community-Patch-DLL/issues/9976 (i'm overdue to update there -- maybe its been fixed since?)

we'd still have to dynamically apply the promo, but thats well-within the realm of acceptable lua jank imo lol

 

[balparmak]

Its more if there is an AI vs AI war and I go in and block paths for one or both because of free open borders which ofc is an option to not abuse. Dont need many units to mess up pathing.
Worse is I really really dislike AI units randomly walking in my lands standing in the way and even now AI scouts can annoy when they observe in certain neutral tiles near my wars messing up my combat line so I have to purchase extra tiles.
If the limit is "cant end turn inside borders" yes thats fine but probably much more complicated to code?

Hm yes I didn't think about that, fair point. Can't end turns would indeed make most sense, not sure how difficult it would be though. Can we "go through" neutral AI units, maybe we should allow that.

 

[azum4roll]

Can't end turns will also require sight on the entire path, just like early ships and ocean. Speaking of which, does anyone know how early ships and submarines interact? Is it possible to get an early ship stuck in the ocean if it encounters a submarine halfway through?

 

[Tekamthi]

Can't end turns will also require sight on the entire path, just like early ships and ocean. Speaking of which, does anyone know how early ships and submarines interact? Is it possible to get an early ship stuck in the ocean if it encounters a submarine halfway through?

idk about this case specifically, but where i often play with invisibility applied to recon, can say generally that you just can't path to a plot with invisible units in it -- this means you can detect their location without actually seeing them by attempting to move into their plot, but should also mean you can't get stuck mid-move, as you can never initiate said move

 

[CppMaster]

Somewhat related to the topic.
I like a lot the concept of Cold War - which is neither Peace or proper War, but something in between - implemented by Amplitude in Endless Legend and probably some other games.

By default two nations start in Cold War, which means:

1. You can enter their territory, but they can attack you without declaring war on you. You cannot while you're there; you need DoW for that.
2. You both can attack each other in neutral territory, without DoW.

Yes! That's very cool indeed!
So how about that?