Border growth, territorial control, minor factions - and how I'd change the way they work

[Krajzen]

So I have no idea how to solve this, perhaps this would require reworking how some fundamentals systems work, but I've always been weirded out by the way the border expansion and the unclaimed land works in civ series. Basically, it's really weird how in civ
1) There is no way for territorially big, aestethically pleasant empires to exist in the early eras, you are forced to have some disconnected spots of your color's city enclaves, surrounded by the 'unclaimed land'. To add insult to injury, barbarians spawn in this unclaimed land, so it's frustrating mechanic. Basically my pet peeve is the inability to feel that your have the classical or medieval empire in those games, you just have disconnected weak colonies among the wilderness.
2) In late game eras there is still a lot of unclaimed land, which nobody cares to grab. To add insult to injury, 'barbarian tribes' somehow manage to spam technologically advanced armies from those areas, so it's frustrating on top of being so unimmersive and absurd. There is no way to rationalize barbarian line infantry with advanced artillery arising from some village tribes in tundra. So you don't have the feeling of modern world, where capitalism, colonialism and imperialism were motivated to put everything under state control, and where any and all unclaimed resources and land became priceless at some point of economic history.
3) Only city - based cultures matter, and all people besides them are always evil savages to exterminate (barbarians) or literally nothing (tbh Barbarians Clans mode went for this issue already, but let's go further)

This connects with the larger issue of how weird, abstract and ahistorical the city border expansion is in recent civ games. What does it even simulate in real life terms, and what I'm supposed to imagine - I have never had the slightest idea. In real life you don't have gigantic swathes of literally empty land, which also somehow can't be controlled by political power in any way and has to wait centuries for the 'spread of culture' (over what, rocks and empty lands?). This abstraction wouldn't be so irritating if not for genuinely annoying mechanical frustrations arising from it. I would be perfectly fine without waiting for a very long time for my newly founded colonies to be able to exploit this gold laying just there, right under their noses - why can't I just send the military to secure this area and found the mine?

I don't know how to solve this weirdness, but maybe I'd change the way border expansion and territorial control work in civ series, on top of completely changing how minor factions work. So the map is covered from the beginning with
- city states
- belligerent or peaceful but still powerful agricultural/horsemen tribes (old 'barbarians') who consider large swathes of territory 'theirs', and who have no cities but villages; they tech is capped at the early modern era
- and vast swathes claimed by much weaker hunter-gatherer tribes, especially climates where you can't have agriculture; they don't even have villages, just units; they tech is capped at the early modern era or earlier

And you interact with all those groups via a unified interface and sets of minor faction diplomacy. And your territory expands by either
- culture/influence passively assimilating nearby areas (sort of old border growth but mixed with diplomacy so it can be much faster but also less stable)
- or diplomatic annexations of minor factions and then assimilating them
- or conquering minor factions (old fights with 'barbarians' and city states).

This way instead of the glacial pace of the old one - dimensional border expansion, and all frustrations and dissociation coming with it, we can have much more dynamic and interesting territorial control and minor faction system, which may give you much better feeling of having the early game empire controlling large area.
'But how is this balanced, what are later eras supposed to do if you claim land so quickly'
Claiming the land under political control is not the same as actually populating it, working it, building all this infrastructure, roads and cities over it, so that's still the work for millenias (not to mention the fact you can lose the grip over those minor factions so it's less stable control). In the meantime you could feel more epic with your medieval kingdom. Not to mention having more interesting and less frustrating interactions with 'barbarians', rather than spending half of the game fighting whack a mole with always chaotic evil savages swarming you from all directions randomly

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

So much to talk about I don't know where or how to start!

I'll begin with settling cities. My idea for a fix is that you can only settle cities if they are connected by territory to your capital. For example, the westernmost extent of your first city is 6 tiles away from the city tile. A newly-settled city extends to 2 tiles in each direction from the city center. A city cannot be founded within 4 tiles of another city. So a second city can be founded (in the western direction) 5 (within your empire), 6 or 7 tiles away. But once Colonialism is discovered/implemented, the territory rule becomes obsolete.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Only city - based cultures matter, and all people besides them are always evil savages to exterminate (barbarians) or literally nothing

That is an inherent problem of the series. I have thought about this a lot, and have been meaning to post a thread on just this issue, but have never got round to doing it.

Civilization is at its heart a city-building game. The game literally starts when you build your first city. The simple act of settling down and having a centralised authority (the deathless Leader) raises you to the level of a civilization. When you meet another civilization, you accord one another respect, meeting as equals. (This is literally referred to in some leaders' greeting lines.) To a city-state you also give some respect, but they can never be on your level because they can never have more than one city. But both civilizations and city-states have borders, lands that you recognise as theirs, that exist by virtue of their cities. The barbarians have nothing, are nothing.

Most of the early game is devoted to settling new cities. Cities are where everything happens. Scientific breakthroughs, cultural achievements, construction of wonders, all so that your civilization can stand the test of time.

Barbarians, on the other hand, have no time for culture or science or constructing buildings. They're too busy fighting to survive. Though it is not represented in the game, historically most 'barbarians' rose up against empires due to crop or livestock issue, having to migrate to new lands and make the wealthy share their wealth, or having the lands they live upon being encroached upon city-dwellers. But because the empire does not want to foot the bills for an alien people, and the 'barbarians' do not want to give up their independence, they resort to violence.

And there are other barbarians, who live only to survive. They do not produce works of art, they do not engage in intellectual pursuits, they go out and hunt and gather food and return to their wives and children, as content as can be. Until winter arrives. Then they move to new lands or weather the storm. And then the whole cycle resumes.

But because they produce nothing of use, and harbour no ambitions to make a mark on the world, they are barbarians. Unlike civilizations, who will trade with you or who will actually compete with you, the barbarians serve no purpose save as an annoyance that must be immediately wiped out, aberrances in a civilised world.

 

[BuchiTaton]

Some ideas:
- Settlers replacing Builder/Worker functions. Tile improvements like farms and mines are pretty much farming villages and mining villages, instead of have a redundant unit with "build charges" is easier to have settlers that can found both cities (spending all their say 3-5 points*) and villages (spending 1 point per improvement). Even more, these settlement point can be spended in district upgrades.
- The Barbarian Clans mechanic could be merged with the "Goody Huts" with a new feature of barbarian Villages, they can turn back to Settlers if needed or when captured by the player to be used as their own Settlers. By the way the use of "Barbarians" can be changed for Nations allowing to give them names of historical groups without the negative connotation.
- Other element of the Barbarian Clans interaction is the chance to turn some into City States. Now there are people that dislike the places where the AI put their cities, since they could mess up their maximization of district placing, but this can be solved just by allowing the option to order a "Forced Settlement" tile when you defeat that Nation(Barbarian Clan). Even better you can also choose the City State you want from a list of avaible ones!

These changes would automatically solve the "border gore" since the villages just would be asigned to your closer city, and they can be placed only if their tiles range connect directly with your cities area. Also the issue of what to do with BC/CS since you can place and spend them in different ways.

 

[AffineConstant]

"Unclaimed land in the midst of an early empire" is perfectly historically accurate, fare moreso than otherwise. Early villages in the bronze age would barely register that they were part of an "empire" at all beyond some sort of armed men showing up to threaten them for things. As being akin to history is part of the series having giant border gaps is perfectly in line. Also far more interesting for gameplay reasons, yes the barbarians are a problem you have to deal with. Problems you have to deal with are literally what the game is. "Aesthetically pleasing" isn't a very interesting goal when the tradeoffs would be sacrificing the previous two points.

The only "border gore" that's relevant to Civ as a series is giant civs in late eras. Historically borders started to matter, and be more and more defined, as time has worn on. Previous Civs did much better at this in late eras, but VI has this weird habit of leaving areas of land unclaimed all throughout a game. A simple fix would be that cultural impact, and thus border growth, would really start to increase with city population. Thus by the later eras you get more border wars rather than empty areas, you could also choose between fewer, bigger pop cities and more cities with fewer pop. A great tradeoff for later game that could be explored more in other mechanics.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I've already posted at length about my solution to 'barbarians':
ALL Tribal (Goodie Huts) Villages, Barbarian Camps as modeled in Civ VI would become part of the same system: Villages, Hamlets, Tribal Camps, Settlements (whatever you want to call them) that can be Hostile (current Barbarians), Friendly (current Goodie Huts) or Neutral (can go either way), they stay on the map with the potential to develop into City States or some equivalent Between Civ Cities And Minor Camps) on-map institution, can be traded with, interacted with diplomatically (but probably not requiring as much diplomaic effort as Envoys and Spies and all the Civ/City State paraphenalia). They would be potential sources of population (immigrants), Units (mercenaries), Technology, Civic and Social Policy practices, Religious influence coming and going, and Trade partners - including as Middle Men for trade with far-off Civilizations.

As for the border problem this should change throughout the game. There is almost no evidence of any political control of one city over another until very late in the establishment of cities: 1500 years or more between trhe first urban concentrations in Egypt and the first 'Early Dynastic' multi-city government, over 5000 years from the first cities in the Middle East to the first multi-city Sumerian 'civilization'. Many early urban groups (Cucutenii, for instance) never show any sign of over all political control: they were individual cities, they grew up, dissolved, disappeared, left virtually no trace until the archeologists came along and dug 'em up much later.
That seems to mean (to me, at least) that after founding your first city, there is another development necessary to extend control from that city to another. You can found more cities on the map, but you cannot effectively control them, it seems, until you develop some kind of administrative/Imperialist social or civic policy to extend your control. Note that there were very early 'satellite' settlements: by 3700 BCE Uruk, one of the earliest Mega Cities, also had strong connections to Hacinebi and Arslantepe in eastern Anatolia that supplied Uruk with raw materials and smelted copper and other metals. These were not quite cities, but were 'industrial' outposts of mines, smelters, kilns, etc. - and far away in distance.

So, early on, separate City States is your default Start, with Settlements to exploit resources some distance away from your 'starting city' until you develop some kind of Control Mechanism that starts allowing conquest/assimilation politically.
Note that at this point, there is no indication of formal 'borders' other than the equivalent of a city radius about a day's march outside the city wall. That only comes along with the control of other cities, apparently.

Once you can control 2 or more cities, you also develop various kinds of 'Multi-city' government, and border control, and can assimilate territories relatively far away from the original city radius/border. Grabbing tiles, I think, should be relatively easy, but require resources Cultural, Political, Military, possibly Religious and Commercial. Hanging on to those tiles may be another story entirely.

Formal Civ Borders are on the one hand relatively late after the first cities, on the other hand are related to 'tribal boundaries' that are prehistoric: even hunter-gatherers fight to control Food and other Resource centers and sources, and mark the boundaries of the territory they consider their own (one of the types of 'totem poles' of the Salish hunter-gatherers of the Pacific Northwest, in fact, is the Boundary Pole to do just that: a physical indicator of where Control starts by a given group). That gives us an in-game excuse to make establishing 'formal' On-Map borders beyond the initial city radius pretty early and grabbing tiles a pretty early mechanic, but not necessarily Permanent: boundary disputes are as old as humans, it appears.

 

[BuchiTaton]

That is an inherent problem of the series. I have thought about this a lot, and have been meaning to post a thread on just this issue, but have never got round to doing it.

Civilization is at its heart a city-building game. The game literally starts when you build your first city. The simple act of settling down and having a centralised authority (the deathless Leader) raises you to the level of a civilization. When you meet another civilization, you accord one another respect, meeting as equals. (This is literally referred to in some leaders' greeting lines.) To a city-state you also give some respect, but they can never be on your level because they can never have more than one city. But both civilizations and city-states have borders, lands that you recognise as theirs, that exist by virtue of their cities. The barbarians have nothing, are nothing.

Most of the early game is devoted to settling new cities. Cities are where everything happens. Scientific breakthroughs, cultural achievements, construction of wonders, all so that your civilization can stand the test of time.

Barbarians, on the other hand, have no time for culture or science or constructing buildings. They're too busy fighting to survive. Though it is not represented in the game, historically most 'barbarians' rose up against empires due to crop or livestock issue, having to migrate to new lands and make the wealthy share their wealth, or having the lands they live upon being encroached upon city-dwellers. But because the empire does not want to foot the bills for an alien people, and the 'barbarians' do not want to give up their independence, they resort to violence.

And there are other barbarians, who live only to survive. They do not produce works of art, they do not engage in intellectual pursuits, they go out and hunt and gather food and return to their wives and children, as content as can be. Until winter arrives. Then they move to new lands or weather the storm. And then the whole cycle resumes.

But because they produce nothing of use, and harbour no ambitions to make a mark on the world, they are barbarians. Unlike civilizations, who will trade with you or who will actually compete with you, the barbarians serve no purpose save as an annoyance that must be immediately wiped out, aberrances in a civilised world.

Here I am not sure what is exactly your point. I mean if you are describing the original way barbarians are portrayed in CIV series, well you are right the game have used this abstraction. But beyond that I see this vision as one that limits CIV in both gameplay and historical aspects.

- First point, CIV is not a city-building game, those are the ones like SimCity, Anno or Caesar series. CIV is an empire-building game like AgeofEmpires, TotalWar or EuropaUniversalis series.
- More "city-building" elements like Districs were recently added, things that were beyond the original CIV's escope. In the same way "barbarians" were also simple abstraction that CIV6 also enhanced with the Barbarian Clans mode.
- Historical "barbarians" are the ones that introduced (between others topics) many (if not most) of the transportation and warfare technologies of early in ancient time. And not forget that many crops were the result of thousand of years of selective breeding of wild plants by "barbarian" cultures.
- Amorites, Arameans, Arabs, Indo-Aryans, Celts, Germans, Slavs, Magyars, Turks, Tais, Chichimecs, etc. Are just some of the many orginally "barbarians" that ended culturizing the previous "civilized" native peoples.
- CIV have already let us play with civs like Shoshone, Huns, Maori, Zulu, etc. That in the "traditional" (and despective) way were better material for "barbarians". So these kind of "barbarian" societies are obviously deserving or more complexity in game.
- The historical interaction between "barbarian" and "civilized" peoples has been in both directions, whatever we talk about domination, culture, technology, resources, etc. But even taking the point of view of the civilized vs barbarian the later were not just "annoying and useless" for the former. Civilized used the "Barbarians" as mercenaries, workforce, buffer againts other nations, trade partners and even objetive of religious conversion.

Again, I think you should know all these, so excuse me if you were pointing something different but your post leave a vague position about this theme. Then my point is that despite the "traditional" portrait of "barbarians" in CIV, it is time to change and improve this aspect of the game. As Districs improved city building Barbarian Clans was a first experimental step in that direction.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Here I am not sure what is exactly your point. I mean if you are describing the original way barbarians are portrayed in CIV series, well you are right the game have used this abstraction. But beyond that I see this vision as one that limits CIV in both gameplay and historical aspects.

- First point, CIV is not a city-building game, those are the ones like SimCity, Anno or Caesar series. CIV is an empire-building game like AgeofEmpires, TotalWar or EuropaUniversalis series.
- More "city-building" elements like Districs were recently added, things that were beyond the original CIV's escope. In the same way "barbarians" were also simple abstraction that CIV6 also enhanced with the Barbarian Clans mode.
- Historical "barbarians" are the ones that introduced (between others topics) many (if not most) of the transportation and warfare technologies of early in ancient time. And not forget that many crops were the result of thousand of years of selective breeding of wild plants by "barbarian" cultures.
- Amorites, Arameans, Arabs, Indo-Aryans, Celts, Germans, Slavs, Magyars, Turks, Tais, Chichimecs, etc. Are just some of the many orginally "barbarians" that ended culturizing the previous "civilized" native peoples.
- CIV have already let us play with civs like Shoshone, Huns, Maori, Zulu, etc. That in the "traditional" (and despective) way were better material for "barbarians". So these kind of "barbarian" societies are obviously deserving or more complexity in game.
- The historical interaction between "barbarian" and "civilized" peoples has been in both directions, whatever we talk about domination, culture, technology, resources, etc. But even taking the point of view of the civilized vs barbarian the later were not just "annoying and useless" for the former. Civilized used the "Barbarians" as mercenaries, workforce, buffer againts other nations, trade partners and even objetive of religious conversion.

Again, I think you should know all these, so excuse me if you were pointing something different but your post leave a vague position about this theme. Then my point is that despite the "traditional" portrait of "barbarians" in CIV, it is time to change and improve this aspect of the game. As Districs improved city building Barbarian Clans was a first experimental step in that direction.

I was only pointing out that the core mechanics of the game, as well as the emphasis on what constitutes a civilization, contribute heavily to the portrayal of barbarians as good-for-nothings who must be brought to rein by more civilised peoples. While this is accurate from a perspective point of view – that is to say, empires viewed 'barbarians' in exactly this way – I fear most Civ players miss the fact that they're only exposed to one side of the story; the 'barbarians' are voiceless, no more than bloodthirsty marauders who must be wiped out or kept at bay.

As for the statement about Civilization being a city-building game, I should have said 'city-settling'. Diplomacy and warfare are only extensions of the core system, which is settling and improving cities. Strip Civilization to its core and that is what you have.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

I had been meaning to make a post for this, but never got round to actually doing it, so here it goes. Some disjointed thoughts on how to improve the barbarian system:

Instead of nameless homogeneous barbarians, you have free nations with their own unique components, traits and/or abilities, but don't have immortal leaders similar to that of civilizations, instead have a vague 'leadership' with whom you conduct diplomacy.

Free nations cannot build cities, instead they have settlements. These settlements can only produce units and perhaps a limited selection of buildings/infrastructure. Settlements are sustained by the yields of surrounding tiles, and by loot or tribute. Because free nations are incapable of building infrastructure conducive to advanced agriculture, they will find it difficult to sustain their growing population as they cannot greatly improve their tiles, which contributes to internal discontent.

As internal discontent increases, free nations may take to attacking other free nations, city-states and civilizations. They will attack caravans and pillage tiles. Sometimes they will threaten the player and demand tribute, other times they will simply attack and the player will himself have to initiate diplomatic interactions.

The player can offer to pay tribute (gold, food, etc.) for a set amount of turns, during which neither can attack the other. In some cases, the player can offer to assimilate them in his empire. Whether the free nation accepts this depends on how independent-minded they are, which can vary from nation to nation.

Assimilation causes an influx of citizens (who retain memory of their former free nation) and the ability to build unique components of that free nation. Assimilation has his drawbacks. It can lead to internal discontent for the player's empire, and the assimilated nation might rebel should the empire face a minor collapse. The empire collapses so once internal discontent reaches a certain point (which is less than the point for a major, or total, collapse) causing citizens who belonged to their former to no longer work for their new empire, and causing any free nation unique components to stop working as well, and free nation units to rise up in arms and take over your cities. This would of course happen if the free nation is not completely assimilated. Once it is completely assimilated, citizens and units 'forget' their memories of their ex-free nation.

(This 'foreign' citizen mechanic will, outside of free nations, also work with conquered cities. An empire that wishes not to deal with hostile citizens may choose to massacre them or banish them. Banishment will cause them to flock to nearby empires, to whom they will not be hostile, and your enemies can gain free citizens and grow more powerful.)

If relations are cordial enough, empires can also trade with free nations. Some free nations may be able to produce unique Luxury Resources, which could either be drawn from a pool common to all free nations or be specific to just that free nation.
Empires may also be able to forge alliances with free nations. The negotiations for such alliances would be complex; they would lay out what benefits the free nation gets from allying with the empire, and the free nation may demand mandatory protection, or tribute, or recognition of their lands, for as long as the alliance holds.
Empires will also be able to sign peace treaties where both parties agree not to attack one another.

Free nations can build unique units specific to their unique nation. These unique units can be hired as part of treaties.
Free nations might be divided into tribes (depending on which nations possess the tribal trait), and each tribe will have usually one, but occasionally more settlements. Tribes may war with one another, but may sometimes unite against a common foe, depending on the free nation's unity level.

Free nations with nomadic trait will not have permanent settlements, instead will camp from one place to another, depending on yield of tiles, and whether they are facing disease and/or war.
This is the cue for introducing another game mechanic: climate. Certain areas on the map will receive rainfall at certain times of the year. Tropical regions will receive more rainfall in the summer. Winter can cause crop failure as well cause rivers to freeze over.

Harsh weather will cause problems for nomadics, who will move and change settlements. Harsh weather will also cause free nations to be more pressing in their demands and more hostile, to the point that they may assault cities in large frustrated numbers in order to get loot to help their nation survive. In this case the player might either meet their drastic demands, or try to wipe them out.

Free nations with 'land attachment' trait will claim larger amount of land for themselves, as well as be more hostile towards those whom they feel are encroaching on them. This will become a major issue when civilisations seek to expand their territory.

Over time, a settlement may evolve into a city-state, provided the conditions are right.

Once a free nation takes over a city, whether as rebels or more conventionally, and annexes it, they will form a new empire, taking the name of the first city they took over. For example, if they take over Tarsus, they will be called the Tarsian Empire. If they take over the capital, they may adopt the name of that empire and may claim its identity (as in the case of the Manchu forming their own dynasties). Every city in the game has a unique name, as well as a unique adjective. This unique adjective can also be used for free cities that become independent when they rebel, giving them their own identity instead of lumping all into a 'Free Cities' blob, and allow for advanced diplomacy (instead of them behaving as simple barbarians). (This could be problematic for certain civilizations that are named after one of their cities e.g. Rome, Kiev etc., so maybe not my greatest idea.)

 

[pineappledan]

Most of the OP takes a decidedly uncharitable reading of how the game's border mechanics work. It seems to me OP has some misapprehensions about how territorial states work, how effective/meaningful borders were in history, and what it is that the game actually depicts.

Basically my pet peeve is the inability to feel that your have the classical or medieval empire in those games, you just have disconnected weak colonies among the wilderness.

Those "powerful" empires had weak, non-existent, unenforceable borders that leaked like sieves for most of history. The most obvious reason being that borders are a thoroughly modern collective delusion that pre-modern people didn't respect, because when you really think about it, borders are kind of stupid. Within South and Southeast Asia, there wasn't even any illusion about these claims to territoriality, because state power was conceptualized as Mandalas that emanated state authority from the core, rather than being discrete borders. Perhaps what you are "peeved" about is a different, but equally valid depiction of borders in a pre-modern context?

Just because there isn't anything shown on the map doesn't mean it's empty. Do you seriously expect the game to depict little groups of hunter-gatherers etc. constantly ambling around the neutral tiles? The Barbarian encampments are generated from a background substrate of "uncivilized" people, who sometimes band together to resist the encroachment of civilization or organize raids into civilized lands. And they could do this anywhere and indeed did do this even within claimed territory nominally under the control of an empire. Consider the history of the sack of Rome in the 5th century. In retaliation for a massacre of Gothic families in Constantinople, Goths from throughout the empire who had been working as non-citizen field hands, laborers, or just living beneath the notice of the Roman administration gathered together under Alaric the Visigoth as he was billeting in Pannonia -- also claimed Roman land -- and invaded the Italian peninsula from there. Now also consider how much less centralized and organized the medieval kingdoms that succeeded Rome were, and how much capacity they would have to identify, police, and counter a Barbarian uprising happening on the periphery of their lands.

This connects with the larger issue of how weird, abstract and ahistorical the city border expansion is in recent civ games. What does it even simulate in real life terms, and what I'm supposed to imagine - I have never had the slightest idea. In real life you don't have gigantic swathes of literally empty land, which also somehow can't be controlled by political power in any way and has to wait centuries for the 'spread of culture' (over what, rocks and empty lands?).

You can think of the tiles enclosed by your borders in civ as places where your empire has a strong territorial claim. The borders of your imagined IRL civ might extend beyond that. This is reflected in the game terms by civs being annoyed by you settling cities near to their land "in territory they consider to be theirs". Civs make weak claims to territory that they don't have the state capacity to tax, extract resources from, police, recruit, or develop. Consider the many border conflicts between the Qing and the Russian Empire in the 1600s. Neither nation had a strong claim to Eastern Siberian lands beyond making their land look bigger on a map. Also consider that Kamchatka is still marked as Russian on all world maps for at least the past 150 years, despite Russia's repeated failed attempts to actually pacify or have any productive contact with the indigenous Chukchi who continue to live there, continue to not pay taxes or learn Russian, or participate in Russian politics or economies. If the Russians sent an expedition of Cossacks to rampage through that territory it quickly reverted to being ungoverned within a year.

For myself, I conceptualize the bordered areas as places where there is an appreciable ability for the state to lay substantial title to the produce from that land, in the form of taxation or state-run industry. Your cities assign citizens to those tiles, after all, that implies a certain level of infrastructure to get products to and from that area back to market. It also gamifies a certain level of widely-held acknowledgement that your empire/city holds sovereign claim on that land from the people living/working there.

why can't I just send the military to secure this area and found the mine?

Using what equipment? Using what roads or infrastructure. Assuming you actually get a mine going, who will continue to operate it and how will they get the minerals to market? This is still a serious logistical issue, even with fully-fledged modern nations. Iran, for example, has announced they have found the world's largest lithium deposit, but they basically have no way to extract from it, because the Hamadan province is too sparsely populated and it's too expensive/difficult to get mining equipment up into those mountains. It's not sufficient to found a mine, you have to be able to work the mine, and that requires much more than you simply calling 'dibs' on it.

 

[Krajzen]

Those "powerful" empires had weak, non-existent, unenforceable borders that leaked like sieves for most of history. The most obvious reason being that borders are a thoroughly modern collective delusion that pre-modern people didn't respect, because when you really think about it, borders are kind of stupid. Within South and Southeast Asia, there wasn't even any illusion about these claims to territoriality, because state power was conceptualized as Mandalas that emanated state authority from the core, rather than being discrete borders. Perhaps what you are "peeved" about is a different, but equally valid depiction of borders in a pre-modern context?

You are absolutely correct with all those arguments, which are supporting my proposal instead of being against it, which makes me actually kinda disappointed in myself how I didn't bring them myself when arguing why my view of more dynamic, fluctuating, decentralized political borders is better than the binary iron curtain dichotomy of civ games.

Just because there isn't anything shown on the map doesn't mean it's empty. Do you seriously expect the game to depict little groups of hunter-gatherers etc. constantly ambling around the neutral tiles? The Barbarian encampments are generated from a background substrate of "uncivilized" people, who sometimes band together to resist the encroachment of civilization or organize raids into civilized lands.

Yeah, and I am quite uncomfortable with this degree of abstraction, where everything besides imperial states is either complete void or always chaotic evil savage, which is also quite boring as gameplay, hence my attempt to introduce something simultaneously more fun and with less unpleasant implications.

In retaliation for a massacre of Gothic families in Constantinople, Goths from throughout the empire who had been working as non-citizen field hands, laborers, or just living beneath the notice of the Roman administration gathered together under Alaric the Visigoth as he was billeting in Pannonia -- also claimed Roman land -- and invaded the Italian peninsula from there.

Which cannot be modeled at all in the current civ games while my model would be perfect for that!

You can think of the tiles enclosed by your borders in civ as places where your empire has a strong territorial claim. The borders of your imagined IRL civ might extend beyond that. (...) For myself, I conceptualize (...)

Well, I literally can't think of them that way (as in, my personal taste for abstraction and filling the gaps with imagination doesn't go that far), so this attempt at argumention falls flat roght at the start, although I do suppose that the topic of abstracted - vs - literal (board gamey vs simulationist) approach to 4X games is a big problem of subjective taste in general. I'm sorry but when the game colors some land as 'mine' and some land as 'belonging to nobody' then I think there are plenty of people like me who just don't do those huge leaps of metagame intepretation and just intuitively look at that in the most straightforward way possible: that land is mine, that land belongs to nobody.

Using what equipment? Using what roads or infrastructure. Assuming you actually get a mine going, who will continue to operate it and how will they get the minerals to market? This is still a serious logistical issue, even with fully-fledged modern nations. Iran, for example, has announced they have found the world's largest lithium deposit, but they basically have no way to extract from it, because the Hamadan province is too sparsely populated and it's too expensive/difficult to get mining equipment up into those mountains. It's not sufficient to found a mine, you have to be able to work the mine, and that requires much more than you simply calling 'dibs' on it.

I wanted to refer to that piece, but I didn't know how, since that's not against my views, for I've already said that (broad) political sovereignity =/= infrastructure.

What I don't understand is why exactly is passive cultural spread supposed to depict political sovereignity over land instead of, well, anything political, be it more direct or more indirect. If Achaemenid Persia sees some very valuable area, rich in resources, outside of its current political sphere of influence (which in civ games is depicted only by borders, there is nothing else in game to depict it besides maybe city states), inhabited by some minor peoples, it frequently wants to gaiin political control over that area (directly or indirectly). What didn't happen in history was Achaemenid Persia being forced to passively wait for decades until its 'culture' 'took control' of such border land, which is way too big of an abstraction for me to intuitively grasp in any way. Especially as border growth in civ series, the only mark of control over land, is sped up by theatres, operas, paintings etc - its not even 'influence' resources produces by embassies etc which I could handwave as their background work to influence local elites.

 

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

It would be nice to know what actual limits that an AI claims to be "their" territory when they warn you about settling in "their" territory.
Perhaps the mini map can show lighter shades of a civ's cultural colors to reveal likely areas of where their settlers are calculating settling their cities. (Sort of like how city location recommendations pop up for you.). That, in effect, could reveal what tiles than an AI is loosely claiming to be "theirs".

The loyalty mechanic sort-of kind-of does this in Civ 6 but it's still pretty opaque as to how it works.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

It would be nice to know what actual limits that an AI claims to be "their" territory when they warn you about settling in "their" territory.
Perhaps the mini map can show lighter shades of a civ's cultural colors to reveal likely areas of where their settlers are calculating settling their cities. (Sort of like how city location recommendations pop up for you.). That, in effect, could reveal what tiles than an AI is loosely claiming to be "theirs".

The loyalty mechanic sort-of kind-of does this in Civ 6 but it's still pretty opaque as to how it works.

There is a similar mechanic in Europa Universalis IV where you can see which provinces are being claimed by a certain nation so you know you'll damage relations if you take them. (It also works the other way around where the player can also declare claims)

 

[Marla_Singer]

So much to talk about I don't know where or how to start!

I'll begin with settling cities. My idea for a fix is that you can only settle cities if they are connected by territory to your capital. For example, the westernmost extent of your first city is 6 tiles away from the city tile. A newly-settled city extends to 2 tiles in each direction from the city center. A city cannot be founded within 4 tiles of another city. So a second city can be founded (in the western direction) 5 (within your empire), 6 or 7 tiles away. But once Colonialism is discovered/implemented, the territory rule becomes obsolete.

Historically speaking, the first "multi-city civilizations" were rather secured trade networks, so your idea makes sense. However, that can only work if you consider territories as being naturally "connected" by rivers and coasts as navigation made those the most efficient routes for trade untill invention of railroad. In that context, you wouldn't need any different rule with colonialism outside extending the principle to oceans. Now I don't know how easy would it be to implement that and if that would be enjoyable gameplaywise. It would require first rivers to be on tiles rather than bordering them so that they could behave as natural "roads" (which would still be a good idea to me).