Ferris Bueller
Chieftain
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2015
- Messages
- 60
I wrote this because I think some people might find it interesting, and because I have frequently heard it said that the Civ series seems to be lacking for new ideas. Because what I’m proposing is so extremely different, I will describe it sequentially, in other words, this is what a player would notice if they started the game and played it through.
First of all, the map. The first thing that would stand out would be that there is no grid. The game is area-based, not square-or-hex based. The areas in turn are not predetermined but rather develop organically as the events of the game unfold. Within them, cities, for the most part, grow up gradually according to population growth, access to transportation and natural resources, and so forth, as they historically did, without the player directly ordering the process, although it is also possible to construct a city by fiat if the player feels it is worth the expense. Also, there is no minimum distance between cities, which can be so close to each other that they eventually merge.
Now, the factions. First of all, all starts are the same; the player is the paramount chief of a small sedentary society, which has ceased to be mobile before the game began. The information about the outside world is limited and visible access to natural resources at the start is always roughly similar to any other start, meaning that there is no point to rerolling for a better start. The civs are not historical countries, and are specific to each game, since each game is set in a different world. The names, along with those for natural features, are generated by the computer (the player is free to rename proper names under his or her control if desired). There are no city-states as such and all non-barbarians (the barbarians are like Aliens in Beyond Earth), are trying to win, although in the normal course of events one can expect most to end up so small that they will act like city-states.
No one starts out with unique units or abilities. These are awarded to individual civs as the game progresses, based on actions they tend to engage in repeatedly and if someone else has done the same thing more often. For example, if someone started in a jungle on a peninsula near a lot of minor factions, they might end up with the (using Civ 5 examples) Brazilwood Camp as their Unique Building, the equivalent of the Hellenic League as their Unique Ability, and the Ship of the Line as their Unique Unit. Players are made aware of these when the relevant tech is researched. On the other hand, another civ might do even more sailing and end up with the Ship of the Line instead.
Speaking of the tech tree, this also works quite differently than those of previous games. First of all, it is somewhat randomized each game, although of course not to the extent of having progression occur in a bizarre order. Second, the player doesn’t see it beyond those immediately available to research. This means no more rushing techs for the sake of speeding up research on another one due to be completed in 1500 years’ time. All techs pertaining to activities the country engages in are automatically researched simultaneously (the exception would be, for example, a completely landlocked country, which wouldn’t automatically research techs pertaining to oceangoing ships), with the default position being science output being split equally between them. However, the player does have the option of giving research grants to speed up research on one or more techs. There are no eras, which are, in my opinion, somewhat arbitrary labels given by people after-the-fact. Instead, the impression of eras will arise naturally from the progression of events in the game itself. Lastly, how long research takes is also semi-randomized. The player would see something like “Metal Casting 12-16 Turns.” This is for the purpose of making research more realistic and less gamey, since historically, people didn't have the ability to know what would come beyond the leading edge, and exactly how long research would take in a given area was always somewhat random.
An extensive espionage system would be present, similar to this mod for Civ 5.https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1293662755
Units, movement, and combat. Units cost population, and the player has the option of leaving units in training for longer than necessary for higher quality. This means that, as in real life, there will tend to be a higher-quality standing military in peacetime combined with a larger number of lower-quality units created after the war starts. Exceptionally experienced elite units gradually lose their promotions in peacetime until they are level with the best unit the civ is capable of training. There is no unit stacking, but because there aren’t hexes or squares, units, while not exactly to-scale, are far closer to real life scale than in most 4x games. Movement is variable, with units having a basic and maximum movement ability, the basic being how far it can move without suffering a combat penalty, which grows progressively more severe towards maximum movement. This means ambushes such as the Battle of Lake Trasimene or the Third Battle of Kharkov are possible.
Supply lines are in the game, but they are handled entirely by the computer, which calculates them based on the state of the civ or civs units belong to, combined with the transportation improvements or lack thereof in a given area. All the player has to do to determine the supply situation is hover the cursor over the area and the information of whether units could be supplied there automatically pops up. The penalty for having outrun or being cut off from one’s supply lines is being unable to heal except by pillaging. Players can pillage/destroy their own improvements in a scorched earth policy. Combat is resolved simultaneously after all players have completed their turns (the order in which the end turn button was clicked is irrelevant), meaning that if two sides are moving towards each other they would clash in the middle with neither reaching their intended destinations before the fighting starts.
Culture is mostly replaced (although the cultural victory condition still exists) by a new metric called Imperium, hence the title. Imperium is a measure of how much an empire is able to do, and everything players do costs Imperium, including ordinary peacetime functions such as revenue collection. Some amount is provided at the start. Aside from that, it is earned by winning wars, of which there will be a lot even in the early game since, as said previously, the barbarians are like aliens in Beyond Earth, and by certain policies and religious tenets, which provide an increase in the baseline amount of Imperium. When Imperium is low enough and unhappiness is high enough, rebellions will brake out and there is a good chance the civ will fragment. If this happens, the breakaway(s) become factions in their own right. Imperium costs increase exponentially the larger the empire is, both in terms of land area and population. It would be possible to keep one’s faction so small that it could easily handle the periodic waves of internal strife, but it would then be pretty vulnerable to invasion in most situations and would probably lack the capacity to be competitive in terms of winning the game.
These rules exist for the purpose of correcting two deficiencies I see in 4x games. The first is the lack of supply constraints, which removes a whole dimension from warfare. Historically, the cutting of supply lines was key to the outcome of numerous engagements throughout history, and their absence makes combat far more attritional and linear than it ought to be. At a grand level, it makes domination ridiculously easy to achieve to the point where it’s often a default, which is absurd. Conquering the world should be harder than attracting great painters. The second is rise-and-fall dynamism. Historically, the longest-lasting faction I can think of was Venice, a city-state, which lasted a thousand years. No large empire has ever lasted for more than 250 years without fragmentation of some kind (although cultures can last longer). Yet in Civ an empire can sit still for thousands of years with no internal upheaval. Now, given that players aren’t historical people but immortal demigods, it should be possible to last throughout the game, but not guaranteed. Together, these two elements eliminate the frequent problem of the game being won by the late-game because one faction has become so large that it can't be stopped from snowballing. An empire could control 50% or more of the map and still realistically be toppled through military overstretch and rebellion. I also try to provide a framework for an “easy to learn, hard to master” game, which is my favorite kind.
All this said, it is of course still possible to be super-expansionist. Taking an early game example, a faction could fight and win against a lot of barbarians, earning a lot of Imperium, which is then used to unlock a large number of civics. This allows for great increases in revenue, the draftable proportion of the population, and so forth.
First of all, the map. The first thing that would stand out would be that there is no grid. The game is area-based, not square-or-hex based. The areas in turn are not predetermined but rather develop organically as the events of the game unfold. Within them, cities, for the most part, grow up gradually according to population growth, access to transportation and natural resources, and so forth, as they historically did, without the player directly ordering the process, although it is also possible to construct a city by fiat if the player feels it is worth the expense. Also, there is no minimum distance between cities, which can be so close to each other that they eventually merge.
Now, the factions. First of all, all starts are the same; the player is the paramount chief of a small sedentary society, which has ceased to be mobile before the game began. The information about the outside world is limited and visible access to natural resources at the start is always roughly similar to any other start, meaning that there is no point to rerolling for a better start. The civs are not historical countries, and are specific to each game, since each game is set in a different world. The names, along with those for natural features, are generated by the computer (the player is free to rename proper names under his or her control if desired). There are no city-states as such and all non-barbarians (the barbarians are like Aliens in Beyond Earth), are trying to win, although in the normal course of events one can expect most to end up so small that they will act like city-states.
No one starts out with unique units or abilities. These are awarded to individual civs as the game progresses, based on actions they tend to engage in repeatedly and if someone else has done the same thing more often. For example, if someone started in a jungle on a peninsula near a lot of minor factions, they might end up with the (using Civ 5 examples) Brazilwood Camp as their Unique Building, the equivalent of the Hellenic League as their Unique Ability, and the Ship of the Line as their Unique Unit. Players are made aware of these when the relevant tech is researched. On the other hand, another civ might do even more sailing and end up with the Ship of the Line instead.
Speaking of the tech tree, this also works quite differently than those of previous games. First of all, it is somewhat randomized each game, although of course not to the extent of having progression occur in a bizarre order. Second, the player doesn’t see it beyond those immediately available to research. This means no more rushing techs for the sake of speeding up research on another one due to be completed in 1500 years’ time. All techs pertaining to activities the country engages in are automatically researched simultaneously (the exception would be, for example, a completely landlocked country, which wouldn’t automatically research techs pertaining to oceangoing ships), with the default position being science output being split equally between them. However, the player does have the option of giving research grants to speed up research on one or more techs. There are no eras, which are, in my opinion, somewhat arbitrary labels given by people after-the-fact. Instead, the impression of eras will arise naturally from the progression of events in the game itself. Lastly, how long research takes is also semi-randomized. The player would see something like “Metal Casting 12-16 Turns.” This is for the purpose of making research more realistic and less gamey, since historically, people didn't have the ability to know what would come beyond the leading edge, and exactly how long research would take in a given area was always somewhat random.
An extensive espionage system would be present, similar to this mod for Civ 5.https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1293662755
Units, movement, and combat. Units cost population, and the player has the option of leaving units in training for longer than necessary for higher quality. This means that, as in real life, there will tend to be a higher-quality standing military in peacetime combined with a larger number of lower-quality units created after the war starts. Exceptionally experienced elite units gradually lose their promotions in peacetime until they are level with the best unit the civ is capable of training. There is no unit stacking, but because there aren’t hexes or squares, units, while not exactly to-scale, are far closer to real life scale than in most 4x games. Movement is variable, with units having a basic and maximum movement ability, the basic being how far it can move without suffering a combat penalty, which grows progressively more severe towards maximum movement. This means ambushes such as the Battle of Lake Trasimene or the Third Battle of Kharkov are possible.
Supply lines are in the game, but they are handled entirely by the computer, which calculates them based on the state of the civ or civs units belong to, combined with the transportation improvements or lack thereof in a given area. All the player has to do to determine the supply situation is hover the cursor over the area and the information of whether units could be supplied there automatically pops up. The penalty for having outrun or being cut off from one’s supply lines is being unable to heal except by pillaging. Players can pillage/destroy their own improvements in a scorched earth policy. Combat is resolved simultaneously after all players have completed their turns (the order in which the end turn button was clicked is irrelevant), meaning that if two sides are moving towards each other they would clash in the middle with neither reaching their intended destinations before the fighting starts.
Culture is mostly replaced (although the cultural victory condition still exists) by a new metric called Imperium, hence the title. Imperium is a measure of how much an empire is able to do, and everything players do costs Imperium, including ordinary peacetime functions such as revenue collection. Some amount is provided at the start. Aside from that, it is earned by winning wars, of which there will be a lot even in the early game since, as said previously, the barbarians are like aliens in Beyond Earth, and by certain policies and religious tenets, which provide an increase in the baseline amount of Imperium. When Imperium is low enough and unhappiness is high enough, rebellions will brake out and there is a good chance the civ will fragment. If this happens, the breakaway(s) become factions in their own right. Imperium costs increase exponentially the larger the empire is, both in terms of land area and population. It would be possible to keep one’s faction so small that it could easily handle the periodic waves of internal strife, but it would then be pretty vulnerable to invasion in most situations and would probably lack the capacity to be competitive in terms of winning the game.
These rules exist for the purpose of correcting two deficiencies I see in 4x games. The first is the lack of supply constraints, which removes a whole dimension from warfare. Historically, the cutting of supply lines was key to the outcome of numerous engagements throughout history, and their absence makes combat far more attritional and linear than it ought to be. At a grand level, it makes domination ridiculously easy to achieve to the point where it’s often a default, which is absurd. Conquering the world should be harder than attracting great painters. The second is rise-and-fall dynamism. Historically, the longest-lasting faction I can think of was Venice, a city-state, which lasted a thousand years. No large empire has ever lasted for more than 250 years without fragmentation of some kind (although cultures can last longer). Yet in Civ an empire can sit still for thousands of years with no internal upheaval. Now, given that players aren’t historical people but immortal demigods, it should be possible to last throughout the game, but not guaranteed. Together, these two elements eliminate the frequent problem of the game being won by the late-game because one faction has become so large that it can't be stopped from snowballing. An empire could control 50% or more of the map and still realistically be toppled through military overstretch and rebellion. I also try to provide a framework for an “easy to learn, hard to master” game, which is my favorite kind.
All this said, it is of course still possible to be super-expansionist. Taking an early game example, a faction could fight and win against a lot of barbarians, earning a lot of Imperium, which is then used to unlock a large number of civics. This allows for great increases in revenue, the draftable proportion of the population, and so forth.
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