Civilization Imperium, a Concept for a Radically Different Game

Ferris Bueller

Chieftain
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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.
 
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A few thoughts/questions:

Is “barbarian” a conceptually valid category? It seems to me that it is a lumping together of small tribes and pirates, neither of which were historically the irrationally undiplomatic and hostile people seen in most games. Perhaps it would be more logical if they were replaced by more direct representations of what they really were-small factions that one can play as and negotiate with in the same way as any other. Given the extremely dynamic nature of the game design I propose, it would happen fairly regularly that tribes of this sort could suddenly become major factions by taking over crumbling empires.

On religion: I’m not sure if the way it is currently represented in the Civ series is the best way. Historically, empires mostly didn’t found religions, they modified them when they wanted to make them their official religion. Also, I don’t see why there is a cap on the number which can be founded. Islam came centuries after other major religions, and if a few relatively contingent events had gone the other way, Taiping Christianity would have hundreds of millions of followers today. Also, a good argument could be made that belief systems like Marxism, which isn’t technically a religion, were similar enough in the way they operated and were modified when they were made the state “religion” that they should be handled under the same system.

It occurs to me that because players in this game would more be handling the kinds of decisions real-life rulers make, that is, taxation, warfare, civic structure, large construction projects etc., instead of managing individual cities, the game would probably be significantly shorter, particularly in the mid-late game when factions become really big.
 
I see you like to reinvent the wheel, just like me ! :D

You can find my vision for a game like Civ in my signature. Both our visions overlap sometimes, the only big difference is about city status : I see cities coming after the start, by building infrastructure that would allow for more people to stack in one tile, but being in that way sedentary. (no stack of doom)

Also, the granularity of my idea is kinda extreme, and eventhough most things could be automatized, especially when cities coming along, fall of empires turns could be quite tedious to play. Not to mention one of the last ideas of my thread : population points promotions, which would be very tedious if population points + units are comparable to other Civs.
 
As to religion, I see it working in a traditional Civ more like ideologies do in Civ5 : penalties to happiness depending on your citizens conversions, and you to be forced to adopt another religion to stay in power. Of course, schisms would play a dynamic role.

Well, one could say that it's so obvious that the devs didn't even included official state religion, and that your untold "official" religion is the majority of your people. But, if you look at Ideologies... well, that would imply that every religion has different effects, pros and cons, and i suppose that it could appear to be controversial by mistake. So nevermind.
 
I see you like to reinvent the wheel, just like me ! :D

You can find my vision for a game like Civ in my signature. Both our visions overlap sometimes, the only big difference is about city status : I see cities coming after the start, by building infrastructure that would allow for more people to stack in one tile, but being in that way sedentary. (no stack of doom)

Also, the granularity of my idea is kinda extreme, and eventhough most things could be automatized, especially when cities coming along, fall of empires turns could be quite tedious to play. Not to mention one of the last ideas of my thread : population points promotions, which would be very tedious if population points + units are comparable to other Civs.

In case I was unclear, no cities at the start is what I envision too. I picture a player starting with some number of small agricultural settlements, one or two of which clearly has the potential for large growth due to proximity to natural resources or a river or some such.

When it comes to fall of empires periods, what I imagine alleviating the tediousness would be that the rebellion/civil war itself would provide the player with enough Imperium to stabilize the empire... if they could defeat it. Also, to the extent that overpopulation may have contributed to the unhappiness which fueled the civil war, it would by definition tend to be reduced during the fighting itself.

By population promotions you mean promotions for skilled workers like for military units? That's an interesting idea. I think it could work if done right.

As to religion, I see it working in a traditional Civ more like ideologies do in Civ5 : penalties to happiness depending on your citizens conversions, and you to be forced to adopt another religion to stay in power. Of course, schisms would play a dynamic role.

Well, one could say that it's so obvious that the devs didn't even included official state religion, and that your untold "official" religion is the majority of your people. But, if you look at Ideologies... well, that would imply that every religion has different effects, pros and cons, and i suppose that it could appear to be controversial by mistake. So nevermind.

What you propose could be implemented here with less controversy, because, like the factions, each game's religions would not be historical religions but rather specific to that game's world (including the names) and would develop according to its unique history.
 
By population promotions you mean promotions for skilled workers like for military units? That's an interesting idea. I think it could work if done right.

Here what i thought about in some thread :

What about citizens promotions ? We could have the basic hunter-gatherer, that would be good at collecting food and have some sense of fighting also, and the specialists, that would be even better to collect some kind of particular food (crops/"game"/"berries") or for production. Below this, slaves, that are hunter-gatherers that serves a specialist function without actually having it, like mining and all the penible work. In big cities, slaves wouldn't even have the promotion hunter-gatherer, so they would be very easy to keep enslaved. We would earn promotions throughout time, based on time passing rather than turn-based. For example, if there is a difference of 100 years between the two first turns, then your citizens gain a promotion on turn 2. When the turns last 1 year, you would need 100 turns to have a new promotion, or maybe less than that, let's say 20 turns. (does that mean that your first citizen would have 5 promotions on turn 2 ? Not sure about that... promotions is what is earned with experience, and the modern educationnal entities help a lot in order to acquire knowledge, in opposite to ancient times where the Homo Sapiens was getting knowledge by experience, testing and sometime death, which is still the case of Science by the way)

So you could extend this to Science somehow. By making techs promotion-replacements ? For example, instead of a melee soldier, you could choose to learn a new tech, and your "soldier" remains non-soldier.

You could also specialize your citizen in a nomad-style or sedentary with strong infrastructures. For example, if you want to play hunter-gatherers early, you could choose between 3 different promotions : hunter (better yields vs wild life), gatherer (better yieds vs plants), or warrior (+5 strenght against other humans, while the promotion "soldier" gives you +15 against other humans, but you might lose the hunter-gatherer promotion - maybe you lose the hunter-gatherer promotion after 2 non-hunter-gatherer promotions). Such a "soldier" would be sure a lot more efficient against human, but what if that's not what you need at start ? Your yields will not improve. Later on, with technology, you could create "farmers" that could work exclusively food-tiles (so no more shiny production out of "deers" for example, that could be improved with rank also) and have a little bit of fighting power too. (peasants revolts, or armies of peasants lol)

Of course we would have to begin the game before agriculture tech. (Still think 12000 BCE would fit well)
 
So, if I get it right, rather than the player "shaping the map", the map (cities, infrastructures, etc.) is shaped automatically by an Algorithm masquerading as "the humans doing their own stuff". The job of the player then is to try to steer that big ship within this framework to the best of his or her abilities to where he or she wants it to lead? So, a reactive rather than an active gameplay? You're changing Civ from a 4X to a RPG game. Now just correct me, that't just the impression I had. You may be able to better describe what the player is actually supposed to do in your game. As that's what matters and distinguishes a game from a simulation.

I do very much like the idea of Imperium. In my head, I go a bit further and just put Culture, Gold, Science and Production into one yield called "Governance". Only Food stays and is tile-based. But yeah, that's my game that is in my head, not yours :)
 
Apologies, this reply is late as I was locked out of the forum because of a glitch.

Also, minor edits have been made to the first post for clarity.

Here what i thought about in some thread :

I think the goal of what you're talking about is covered under the section about unique units and abilities, which are earned according to which activities factions do a lot of. Although more detailed systems could certainly be added through expansions or modding.

So, if I get it right, rather than the player "shaping the map", the map (cities, infrastructures, etc.) is shaped automatically by an Algorithm masquerading as "the humans doing their own stuff". The job of the player then is to try to steer that big ship within this framework to the best of his or her abilities to where he or she wants it to lead? So, a reactive rather than an active gameplay? You're changing Civ from a 4X to a RPG game. Now just correct me, that't just the impression I had. You may be able to better describe what the player is actually supposed to do in your game. As that's what matters and distinguishes a game from a simulation.

I do very much like the idea of Imperium. In my head, I go a bit further and just put Culture, Gold, Science and Production into one yield called "Governance". Only Food stays and is tile-based. But yeah, that's my game that is in my head, not yours :)

You are correct to an extent. The general rule is that the more regional/local issues are handled by "the humans doing their own stuff" while the national/empire-wide decisions are made the player. Here's an example of the kinds of decisions I imagine being open to a player at a given point. In one section of the empire, there's a junction of two rivers with fertile floodplains and iron deposits nearby. Unfortunately, the place is also inundated by deep swamps and is completely uninhabitable. Throughout the country, the religion of Telism is rising, but is deeply contested by those loyal to their pre-Telist religions. There is also a need to upgrade the road network to facilitate both commercial and military transportation. And finally, neighboring Khandia is offering to sell expensive but deadly war elephants to help counter the threat of the rising Zerkha Empire, which just took advantage of the decline of ancient Derdorum to swoop in and seize the vast majority of the crumbling empire's territory and is now seen as a regional menace.

One could (A) spend Gold and Imperium (because drafting the large number of workers required won't be popular) to drain the marshland with the goal of building up a powerhouse urban area in the future. Alternatively, there is an option to undertake construction with only Gold (representing the workers being recruited voluntarily) but the expense is very large. Or (B) spend Imperium establishing and modifying Telism as the state religion, with the potential of gaining the numerous benefits associated with the religion should the effort to establish it prove successful. Or (C) upgrade the road network now, in a time of peace, while the expense in Gold and Imperium (or just Gold as described earlier for the marsh drainage) is still relatively affordable. Or (D) purchase the elephants and try to organize a coalition against Zerkha.

When it comes to game vs simulation, it still isn't quite a simulation because, for example, it isn't to scale and the leaders are immortal. Although I imagine it could be relatively easily modded as a world history simulator. Lastly, I don't see 4X and RPG as mutually exclusive. There are RPG elements, but all 4 x's are also still present.
 
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So, I've had a few more thoughts on this design. The first concerns the question of turn-to-turn decisions, which has been raised. Upon reflection, I agree that the game has the potential, in peacetime, to suffer from "empty turns" in which a player does little between clicks of the end turn button. To solve this, each turn, I'm leaning towards the player being presented with a series of decisions based on the interaction of gross national output with the major projects currently underway. For example, let's say that the road construction mentioned earlier, which for the sake of the example is being conducted by prisoners captured in a prior war, coincided with a bad harvest. The player would have a choice to either divert troops to the relief effort for areas affected by food shortages, which would run the risk of the prisoners escaping or rebelling, or keep the personnel assigned to guard the prisoners, which would detract from the relief effort and result in an increase in unpopularity. On the other hand, if the harvest was bountiful, there would be the options of either stockpiling the surplus to cancel out the effects of later shortages, speeding up the construction (because more workers could now be fed), or holding a festival to increase popularity.

Despite the above, what I said earlier about game turns being significantly shorter would still apply. However, instead of having the game itself be shorter, I now favor having a lot more content in terms of technologies, units, civics, etc. than the average 4x, so that the net effect would be to have a game of normal length. This is desirable, in particular, because if the rise-and-fall cycles are going to work they need to be given a fair amount of turns over which to play out, otherwise they will seem like random chaos.

I do very much like the idea of Imperium. In my head, I go a bit further and just put Culture, Gold, Science and Production into one yield called "Governance". Only Food stays and is tile-based. But yeah, that's my game that is in my head, not yours :)

When I read this, I was reminded of a board game I ran across once, but couldn't recall at the moment. I succeeded in finding it, it's called "World War 1 Deluxe Edition." It uses a system called "Mobilization Points" to represent the military potential of both sides at the national level, so the sort of thing you propose has been done. Here are my thoughts on such a simplification in a game with this sort of timescale-

To me, Imperium is a distinct concept from the others. It represents the ability of an empire to effectively rule as opposed to the theoretical physical potential within its borders. However, I can certainly see lumping science and production together into a metric I call "Productivity." I could even, perhaps, see food simply as a natural resource, albeit an extraordinarily important one, which, like the others, acts as an input to Productivity. And, since the ability to effectively conduct taxation is completely tied to how much Imperium a faction has, one could split the functions of gold between Imperium and Productivity. I'm not sure how culture would fit in though.
 
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