[Civ 5] Rise of Mankind design discussion

[zappara]

Rise of Mankind -mod for Civ 5

As you may know I originally spent 7-8 months in designing the tech tree for Civ 4: Rise of Mankind and when redesigned it 1 year later it took another 2 months to make. Now for Civ 5 this task will be much simpler since we can use the stuff from RoM's BtS version but there's many techs that I discarded because I didn't have stuff to fill them but since there's so many RoM modmods we could get some ideas for new techs...

It will take time to play Civ 5 first and learn all the new features in it. For this reason, nothing is set in stone yet and we shall discuss all kinds of new ideas that might be possible to implement in Civ 5.

Rise of Mankind -team

Designers:

Zappara
Afforess

Coders:
Afforess
Arrorn
Dancing Hoskuld
Civ Fuehrer

XML:
Hydromancerx
Dancing Hoskuld
Zappara
Civ Fuehrer

2D Artists:
Tekener
poncratias
Antmanbrooks
Civ Fuehrer

3D Artists:
Civ Fuehrer

Testers:
Dancing Hoskuld




Phase 1: Designing new tech tree

Some things to think about:

• What techs should be included?
• Tech amounts for all eras should be in balance
• Unique Civ specific techs?
• Hidden techs (found through wonders or random events)?
• If you suggest techs, think about what objects those would hold, units, buildings, wonders, etc. We don't want to include empty techs (first draft will probably hold some techs that will be deleted before mod release).
• How important was this tech for humankind's progress?
• Multiple tech trees vs. One tech tree?
• Transhuman era should be like in RoM - not too much scifi / unreal stuff, rather stuff that has prototypes in our world and what most likely will be discovered in next 30 years

If I'll make the Civ 5: Rise of Mankind, then I'll reserve the veto right to include/exclude whatever techs I want but I'll heavily base the techs on discussions here.

Phase 2: Add new content to tech tree that doesn't require new 3d models

• Buildings
• Promotions (we need tree view for these)
• Social Policies
• Re-designed improvements (we need to overhaul them anyway so might as well get started at this point)
• Civ 4 static leaders (like in one mod already done)

Phase 3: Re-design / adjust existing Civ 5 content

• Game defines
• Game speeds
• Game world sizes
• Route system
• Misc stuff
• New xml modifiers?

Phase 4: Add new content to tech tree that requires new 3d models

• Units
• Building/city/improvement graphics

It takes time from 3D modellers to release new graphics for Civ 5 - unless they somehow can convert all Civ 4 models... So I think the re-designed unit system will be one of the last tasks but new unit classes can be added every now and then when models get released.

Phase 5: Secret new stuff that we don't know about yet...


During each phase mod parts can be released as "modules" for which other modmodders can add content as they see fit (since Civ 5 has better support for this kind of system, I think we should maximize the use of it). For this purpose, I think we should name all released components with text "Rise of Mankind - module name here" as that way people will know what modules belong to this modpack. Modules can be small ones or bigger ones, depending on what kind of stuff it holds inside. Once all the modules are done for the initial modpack release, we can pack them all together and release RoM 1.0.

 

[Jabarto]

Well aren't you a forward thinker! If you do end up developing ROM for Civ 5, I'd like to get involved with it a bit. If making scenarios isn't so damn hard as it is for Civ 4, I can contribute those, of course, but if you ever need help with actual development, shoot me a message and maybe I can pitch in. If you want, that is.

Anyway to stay on topic can you tell me more about multiple tech trees and how they would work?

 

[Ronbocdn]

How about if you have army's going to war it needs to connected by someway for resupply Ie Rail Roads caravans air drop bringing supplies to the front as a army needs to be fed so maybe a logistical way of having to send these supplies to the fighter's.

 

[Afforess]

I want to see a screenshot of want the tech tree even looks like before I brainstorm anything myself. It might be very different, and Civ4's is pretty limiting (linear). It would be nice if we could have divergent paths in the future era's to all those "what if..." scenarios.

 

[zappara]

Anyway to stay on topic can you tell me more about multiple tech trees and how they would work?

F.ex. agcicultural advancements in own tree, military techs in another and so on. Techs would of course have "and" requirements so that the trees would overlap like in RoM but visually it would be easier to see what comes next on each technological field. This was one of the ideas I thought about when designing RoM tech tree.

I want to see a screenshot of want the tech tree even looks like before I brainstorm anything myself. It might be very different, and Civ4's is pretty limiting (linear). It would be nice if we could have divergent paths in the future era's to all those "what if..." scenarios.

I think it's going to be similar to Civ 4's tech tree - unless they take completely new approach and use something like 3D mindmap system... however any 3D model can be converted to 2D picture so it really doesn't matter what kind of tech tree we will get in Civ 5 - we can always adapt our designs to new systems.

 

[Hydromancerx]

I would like to see a Prehistoric Era before Ancient and a Space Era after Trans-Human (like Accent of Mankind was going to be).

In addition I would like many of the features AND to be included in base RoM.

Or even make RoM more modular from the start.

In short I would say the more choices the better. Lots of content and lots of techs is what makes RoM and eventually AND more appealing than other mods that limit what they put into it.

 

[Tekener]

I want to see a screenshot of want the tech tree even looks like before I brainstorm anything myself. It might be very different, and Civ4's is pretty limiting (linear). It would be nice if we could have divergent paths in the future era's to all those "what if..." scenarios.

I have been on the GDC 2010 in San Francisco last week were Sid Meier spoke about players and their way of seeing stuff - and also about his worst ideas. There were some really interesting / nice things to learn about

First of all he regreted the idea of a random/unlinear tech tree. He said it turned out that players - once they knew the possibile techs - were getting annoyed of the system like "Damn, give me gunpowder, I know it's out there - don't fool me..."
So according to him in Civ V the tech tree will be as static as in Civ IV - on the other side he's just "consulting" the project, others will make the final descicions.

Off topic but still an impressive sidenote: when they did Civ IV and Civ Revolutions and had players testing it, he noticed a big difference between mathematics and human thinking Like: your unit has strength 3, defender has strength 1, no bonuses, rating = 3:1 - so 75% to win. It turned out people got still angry when they lost since it can't be ... they had 3 (three) and the defender just a poor 1 (=nothing) - how could they lost?
On the other side when they got attacked by 3:1 and still won they said that's fair, since their unit was using better tactics or whatsoever ...
Even better: players agreed a 2:1 can be lost and still more often to be won. But at a 20:10 they couldn't understand they lost ... it can't be since they had twenty! ...

So believe it or not, Sid changed the mathematics in Revolution to have a more player expected result and not a mathematic correct result of fights ... and he tend to use this in Civ V also ...

 

[Afforess]

I have been on the GDC 2010 in San Francisco last week were Sid Meier spoke about players and their way of seeing stuff - and also about his worst ideas. There were some really interesting / nice things to learn about

First of all he regreted the idea of a random/unlinear tech tree. He said it turned out that players - once they knew the possibile techs - were getting annoyed of the system like "Damn, give me gunpowder, I know it's out there - don't fool me..."
So according to him in Civ V the tech tree will be as static as in Civ IV - on the other side he's just "consulting" the project, others will make the final descicions.

Off topic but still an impressive sidenote: when they did Civ IV and Civ Revolutions and had players testing it, he noticed a big difference between mathematics and human thinking Like: your unit has strength 3, defender has strength 1, no bonuses, rating = 3:1 - so 75% to win. It turned out people got still angry when they lost since it can't be ... they had 3 (three) and the defender just a poor 1 (=nothing) - how could they lost?
On the other side when they got attacked by 3:1 and still won they said that's fair, since their unit was using better tactics or whatsoever ...
Even better: players agreed a 2:1 can be lost and still more often to be won. But at a 20:10 they couldn't understand they lost ... it can't be since they had twenty! ...

So believe it or not, Sid changed the mathematics in Revolution to have a more player expected result and not a mathematic correct result of fights ... and he tend to use this in Civ V also ...

Yeah, I've experienced player irrationality before... *cough* Dark Ages... *cough*.

Anyway, I don't want a random or unlinear tech tree (not that a 3d tech tree wouldn't be cool), but one that has a lot of diverging branches in the future game.

 

[civ_king]

I have been on the GDC 2010 in San Francisco last week were Sid Meier spoke about players and their way of seeing stuff - and also about his worst ideas. There were some really interesting / nice things to learn about

First of all he regreted the idea of a random/unlinear tech tree. He said it turned out that players - once they knew the possibile techs - were getting annoyed of the system like "Damn, give me gunpowder, I know it's out there - don't fool me..."
So according to him in Civ V the tech tree will be as static as in Civ IV - on the other side he's just "consulting" the project, others will make the final descicions.

Off topic but still an impressive sidenote: when they did Civ IV and Civ Revolutions and had players testing it, he noticed a big difference between mathematics and human thinking Like: your unit has strength 3, defender has strength 1, no bonuses, rating = 3:1 - so 75% to win. It turned out people got still angry when they lost since it can't be ... they had 3 (three) and the defender just a poor 1 (=nothing) - how could they lost?
On the other side when they got attacked by 3:1 and still won they said that's fair, since their unit was using better tactics or whatsoever ...
Even better: players agreed a 2:1 can be lost and still more often to be won. But at a 20:10 they couldn't understand they lost ... it can't be since they had twenty! ...

So believe it or not, Sid changed the mathematics in Revolution to have a more player expected result and not a mathematic correct result of fights ... and he tend to use this in Civ V also ...

I can take my lumps, I've lost units on >99.9%, I get but I can take it knowing that I've done more than 1000 of those attacks... but I got when it said I had a 100% chance of victory and it died, you would too if your hero had over 1k xp

 

[JanK]

As i understand, there will be no religion and espionage (and probably the same goes for corporations) in Civ5. So for one, i would be glad if ROM included those.
Well, that's all i can think of for now actually...

Cheers, JanK

 

[Deon]

Yes, religion would be nice.

 

[zappara]

Some days ago I had an excellent idea regarding the Civ 5 social policy system (which replaces civics)... I wish I knew how social policies work so that I'd know then if my idea is doable or not. I'm not yet revealing what kind of idea I had

 

[Grathocke]

While I don't think tech advancement should be random, I'd like to see divergent paths to getting to the same place. Different societies have chosen different ways to live their lives and so have emphasized different technological achievements. It may be possible in Civ5 to have, say, 3 paths to the future. You start down one path or another and you stay on that path. At certain critical points (bronze, gunpowder, etc.) the paths all cross and you can then diverge if you want to from your previous path or continue in the same way. It would certainly take a lot of thought to create, but it could add a lot to gameplay.

 

[Grathocke]

As i understand, there will be no religion and espionage (and probably the same goes for corporations) in Civ5. So for one, i would be glad if ROM included those.
Well, that's all i can think of for now actually...

Cheers, JanK

I am in favor of no religion, or a more generic religion system. It always rattles me when I see Saladin as Jewish, or Charlemagne as leader of the Buddhists. Probably just me though.

 

[zappara]

I always felt that the Corporation system in Civ 4 was unfinished - so if possible I'd like to have in Civ5:RoM more complex system (but easy to use) where everything is based on corporations (national or private) when you reach the industrial era. Look at our world, corporations run it and they even affect governments... This would mean that there wouldn't be normal buildings in late game eras, only corporation related buildings which would limit what you can build in your cities since you can't have access to every corporation immediately, thus it would create different games each time depending on what corporations you have access to. Everything else in the mod would reflect this feature, buildings, units, wonders, available techs and social policies etc. Corporate espionage should also be one of the features... Possibly also guild system starting from late classical time...

What do you think about if the mod works this way?

 

[Afforess]

I always felt that the Corporation system in Civ 4 was unfinished - so if possible I'd like to have in Civ5:RoM more complex system (but easy to use) where everything is based on corporations (national or private) when you reach the industrial era. Look at our world, corporations run it and they even affect governments... This would mean that there wouldn't be normal buildings in late game eras, only corporation related buildings which would limit what you can build in your cities since you can't have access to every corporation immediately, thus it would create different games each time depending on what corporations you have access to. Everything else in the mod would reflect this feature, buildings, units, wonders, available techs and social policies etc. Corporate espionage should also be one of the features... Possibly also guild system starting from late classical time...

What do you think about if the mod works this way?

Actually, you are right, corporations in Civ4 ARE unfinished. In the SDK, you can see code that they never used for corporations, so they must have ran out of time, or someone decided they weren't important enough.

Private corporations should spread by themselves, and not need government help (execs) to get them in more cities. That would be beneficial because there is no cost to expanding them, but they can just as easily expand to other countries without you stopping them.

 

[civ_king]

you will love Lua then, Lua also is super fast compared to python (and designed to link with other languages)

 

[Grathocke]

Actually, you are right, corporations in Civ4 ARE unfinished. In the SDK, you can see code that they never used for corporations, so they must have ran out of time, or someone decided they weren't important enough.

Private corporations should spread by themselves, and not need government help (execs) to get them in more cities. That would be beneficial because there is no cost to expanding them, but they can just as easily expand to other countries without you stopping them.

Spreading automatically would be great. They could even build buildings and structures automatically out of direct control of the player. The player (government) would still continue to create infrastructure separately from the corporations. What the corporations would be doing would be somewhat hidden unless you had regulators. Of course, regulators would hinder corporations, as well. The other thing is that corporations would be directly affected by your social policies. Some might be good and some might be bad for corporate growth. They also might build differently under different policies.

One other thing, Civ has always been a one leader kind of game. Maybe once you have a Parliament or Senate there should be elections which force you to interact with elected representatives, or in the case of ancient democracies, with the will of the people. In the case of elected representatives they might be for or against your administration. It could possibly be done in the manner of quests, although on a shorter time frame, or they could pass legislation which might help or hurt your cause.

 

[zappara]

After checking some Civ 5 pics, I think its tech tree looks odd... classical era techs in medieval era and new techs like Trapping (where's Farming etc?) and so on. And there's going to be like 100 techs or so, so I think there's going to be a lot of work to do to improve the tech tree. Tech tree window in Civ 5 looks similar to Civ 4's so I think we can pretty easily use stuff from RoM...

 

[civ_king]

I'm sure Afforess will gladly help you with the SDK