I am an ideas guy. I have created a number of epic-sounding ideas for computer games and board games in the past, but I never manage to do anything with them. Oh yes, once I did create a board game simulating the last 3,000 years of human history which was very fun to play even if ultimately far too complicated to finish. That is the closest I have come to completing one of my ideas.
Another time, as early as 2014, I apparently posted about wanting to get into contact with Firaxis/Sid Meier at this very forum. I was embarrassed to rediscover this post now, because it shows how blind I was to the limitations of my own “brilliant ideas”, thinking that I could just get in contact with someone in high places they would go “Wow, we never thought of that before!” I did actually get in contact with a representative for 2K Games ultimately (which is probably why I forgot about the post at the forum) who kindly told me that there were some really interesting ideas in my paper, that she couldn’t promise that anyone would ever read it but that she would be happy to send me some merch. Some time afterwards I received a huge package containing a statue of Grey Wolf the Barbarian from Civilization Revolution, and that was that (it as since landed in the trash can).
Many of my ideas have actually been pretty bad and I am grateful to realize that today. I am also no longer a gamer and will never be a game designer, instead forcing myself to get down to earth with a normal day job responsibility and other more meaningful, fruitful hobbies. Nevertheless, before I fully release myself from game designer duty, I want to at least drop off one of the basic game concepts of mine at this forum. As of Civilization 6 and 7, there has still not been a tiny bit of movement in a direction that I would like to see when it comes to resource management in an ecologically conscious 21th century civilization game franchise.
Maybe someone will use a few of these ideas for a Civilziation mod. Maybe it could become integrated into another game than Civilization. Maybe nothing will come out of it. Regardless of what, I will drop it off here and leave it.
It’s the Ecology, Stupid
First of all, let me be clear that for me Civilization 4 was the high point of Civ in some regards. I have only played Civ 5 around 150 hours, Civ 6 15 hours, Civ 7 not at all. If many of my ideas seem to grow directly out of Civ 4, that is why. (I think I am still closer to Civ 7 in other regards.)
Citizens, villages, tribes and bands
Your people have supposedly wandered around since time immemorial and are now ready to settle down. But as you get ready to found your first city, you notice that you starting location is surrounded by 5-6 population poins that are scattered in the 2 closest layers of tiles surrounding you. These population points come in the form of villages and semi-nomadic pastoralist tribes. Hovering over the villages, you can read descriptions like “Fishing village” or “Corn farmers”. Hovering over the tribes, you read: “Cow pastoralists”, or “Goat pastoralists”. As you settle your starting location, the surrounding tribes and villages are subjugated by your military/cultural prowess and start sending their surplus to your city. However, they are not “Citizens” in the classical Civ sense because they cannot be reassigned. You still only have 1 Citizen, who settles in the city to work as a specialist there. As you start exploring the world around you, you realize that the world is full of tribes and villages, even beyond your starting position. It is made up of:
Most plant and animal resources are no longer tile-bound as in earlier versions of Civ. Rather, as the game begins, some tribes and villages have domesticated one source of food: for tribes it is always animal resources, for villages it is food crops.
Resource yield is not static but interacts with terrain and climate (a new feature that will be discussed later). For example, Cows may give +2 Food on any Grassland tile while Millet will give +2 Food even on dry terrain. Rice will give a +3 Food bonus on irrigated tiles given that the climate is at least Temperate, and even bigger Food bonuses if the climate is subtropical or tropical.
As new resources become available, tribes and villages will automatically start using them if it increases their food output. A Millet farmer village would then switch to Rice when it becomes available - if its tile is irrigated - and become a Rice farmer village.
More example yields are: Potatoes give a decent food yield increase even in cold climates, Goats allow you to graze the mountains, Reindeers make the Tundra inhabitable, and Camels allow for herding across the inhospitable desert.
Combining crops and animals. Cattle raids
Each tile can cultivate one crop and breed one animal simultaneously, as a rule. This means that Villages can start breeding Cows next to their Wheat farms, producing the maximum amount of food (here we translate the better combination of nutrients into a higher food output in total) for that tile.
A pastoralist tribe can also combine a crop with its chosen animal, but then it will turn into a Village and will have to settle down in a single tile, freeing up one other tile for colonization.
Cattle raids
Because of the great benefit of combining one crop and one animal per tile, and because a civilization will tend to start with more food crops than animals, cattle raiding is a feared early strategy that can be employed against minor tribes or other civilizations. Getting a hold of your neighbor's sheep can sometimes make the difference between making the early game and falling far behind. Because of how important it is in the early game, it should not be overly difficult: you simply have to attack a semi-nomadic tribe somewhere in neutral lands, steel their sheep and run back home. Once the sheep is being bred safely in your lands, behold as Villages start breeding their own sheep, making them more well-nourished than before.
Cities are much smaller and more exploitative
There are no more city districts that take up half the map. Until the Modern Age, cities contain only a fraction of your population as the vast majority of people are Villagers working the countryside. Cities extract the surplus from the countryside to create monuments, buildings, armies and support specialists.
Surplus is extracted via taxation. Taxes can be paid as food directly to the cities or in the form of corvée (feudal forced labor, converts to hammers) – however, population increase will halt if you exploit the people too much. If they are not too oppressed (for instance under a policy of Serfdom), they could also choose to emigrate.
Population limits
As food increases, cities will grow but so will villages and tribes. The population cap for what a village can support is 4 population; for a tribe 2 population; for a hunter-gatherer band, never more than 1.
If a village or tribe grows beyond what it can support, the surplus population point will first of all try to migrate to a nearby tile and maintain the same occupation. If that is not possible, it may migrate to a different tile or a city.
A village can never migrate in its entirety, it must always maintain at least 1 inhabitant.
Population points are autonomous
Villagers and tribes are more autonomous than previously and you cannot simply reassign them to another tile as you like. You can build irrigation and roads for them which helps to spread the use of crops and animals. If a city is razed the villages and tribes remain, even if they suddenly find themselves on neutral lands.
Autonomy comes in three ranks:
Domesticated crops and animals are improved with time. The more villages grow Rice or breed Pigs, the greater the chance that a higher-yield variant of Rice or Pigs will appear in one of the villages. Once it does, it will start spreading to surrounding villages and could eventually spread even across continents via trade routes.
For another example, suppose you start as Mongolia in the Ancient Era with access to Horses. These will be “Level 1” domesticated Horses, meaning that they are not yet large or strong enough to carry a grown man on its back, much less a knight in full armor. You can only use them for Chariots until the time you have “Level 2” Horses, when you can finally start training classical Horsemen or Mounted archers. For the plate-mail Knight or Cataphract, Level 3 is needed.
Climate zones matter
Needless to say, you cannot grow Rice in Scandinavia. Climate needs to become a thing, not just Terrain. And while there are many crops that can be grown for calories, Rice is by far the most efficient one, responsible for the huge populations in many Asian countries today. But there are many more differences between climate zones that make for an interesting game, it’s not just that the cold regions will be able to grow less crops and therefore have a smaller population.
Below are some ideas for how actual differences between climatic/geographical zones could be gamified to create a balanced gameplay. I don’t think all of them are great ideas and there are huge challenges around balancing all regions in a particular age, but perhaps some of the sketches could prove useful.
This article focuses primarily on the early part of the game. In fact, I long ago created a more fully fleshed out version of the same concept including cash crops, plantations, trade wars, and the relationship between raw produce and refined goods in the industrial age, but I think I will leave it here for now, see if it piques any interest at all.
PS. I said I will "drop it off here and leave it", but I will still take questions.
/zuzim
Another time, as early as 2014, I apparently posted about wanting to get into contact with Firaxis/Sid Meier at this very forum. I was embarrassed to rediscover this post now, because it shows how blind I was to the limitations of my own “brilliant ideas”, thinking that I could just get in contact with someone in high places they would go “Wow, we never thought of that before!” I did actually get in contact with a representative for 2K Games ultimately (which is probably why I forgot about the post at the forum) who kindly told me that there were some really interesting ideas in my paper, that she couldn’t promise that anyone would ever read it but that she would be happy to send me some merch. Some time afterwards I received a huge package containing a statue of Grey Wolf the Barbarian from Civilization Revolution, and that was that (it as since landed in the trash can).
Many of my ideas have actually been pretty bad and I am grateful to realize that today. I am also no longer a gamer and will never be a game designer, instead forcing myself to get down to earth with a normal day job responsibility and other more meaningful, fruitful hobbies. Nevertheless, before I fully release myself from game designer duty, I want to at least drop off one of the basic game concepts of mine at this forum. As of Civilization 6 and 7, there has still not been a tiny bit of movement in a direction that I would like to see when it comes to resource management in an ecologically conscious 21th century civilization game franchise.
Maybe someone will use a few of these ideas for a Civilziation mod. Maybe it could become integrated into another game than Civilization. Maybe nothing will come out of it. Regardless of what, I will drop it off here and leave it.
It’s the Ecology, Stupid
First of all, let me be clear that for me Civilization 4 was the high point of Civ in some regards. I have only played Civ 5 around 150 hours, Civ 6 15 hours, Civ 7 not at all. If many of my ideas seem to grow directly out of Civ 4, that is why. (I think I am still closer to Civ 7 in other regards.)
Citizens, villages, tribes and bands
Your people have supposedly wandered around since time immemorial and are now ready to settle down. But as you get ready to found your first city, you notice that you starting location is surrounded by 5-6 population poins that are scattered in the 2 closest layers of tiles surrounding you. These population points come in the form of villages and semi-nomadic pastoralist tribes. Hovering over the villages, you can read descriptions like “Fishing village” or “Corn farmers”. Hovering over the tribes, you read: “Cow pastoralists”, or “Goat pastoralists”. As you settle your starting location, the surrounding tribes and villages are subjugated by your military/cultural prowess and start sending their surplus to your city. However, they are not “Citizens” in the classical Civ sense because they cannot be reassigned. You still only have 1 Citizen, who settles in the city to work as a specialist there. As you start exploring the world around you, you realize that the world is full of tribes and villages, even beyond your starting position. It is made up of:
- Villages, consisting of sedentary people who do not move around. They are best thought of as terrain improvements, although some of the population can migrate under some circumstances
- Semi-nomadic pastoralist tribes, who migrate back and forth between two tiles of their choice. Wherever they move, they bring along a unit of the animal they are herding.
- Fully nomadic hunter-gatherer bands, who move around chasing animals.
- The villages and tribes that become your subjects will be more likely to share their technologies with you. The “Fishing villlage” may share a simple seafaring technology with you, or a tribute of Gold; The “Goat pastoralist” tribe may boost your culture or send you a one-time gift of food.
- Sending a scout to a neutral village (one that is not your subject) can result in similar results. However, villages and (more likely) pastoralist tribes can also be hostile. Finally, hunter-gatherer bands can be recruited as scouts or share knowledge of the surrounding territory.
- Your first settler will subjugate the surrounding population for free, but by the time you found your second or third city you must bring more cultural or military power to bear to succeed in subjugating the surrounding villages. I will not go into detail on this though – the bigger change regards management and spread of resources, see below.
Most plant and animal resources are no longer tile-bound as in earlier versions of Civ. Rather, as the game begins, some tribes and villages have domesticated one source of food: for tribes it is always animal resources, for villages it is food crops.
Resource yield is not static but interacts with terrain and climate (a new feature that will be discussed later). For example, Cows may give +2 Food on any Grassland tile while Millet will give +2 Food even on dry terrain. Rice will give a +3 Food bonus on irrigated tiles given that the climate is at least Temperate, and even bigger Food bonuses if the climate is subtropical or tropical.
As new resources become available, tribes and villages will automatically start using them if it increases their food output. A Millet farmer village would then switch to Rice when it becomes available - if its tile is irrigated - and become a Rice farmer village.
More example yields are: Potatoes give a decent food yield increase even in cold climates, Goats allow you to graze the mountains, Reindeers make the Tundra inhabitable, and Camels allow for herding across the inhospitable desert.
Combining crops and animals. Cattle raids
Each tile can cultivate one crop and breed one animal simultaneously, as a rule. This means that Villages can start breeding Cows next to their Wheat farms, producing the maximum amount of food (here we translate the better combination of nutrients into a higher food output in total) for that tile.
A pastoralist tribe can also combine a crop with its chosen animal, but then it will turn into a Village and will have to settle down in a single tile, freeing up one other tile for colonization.
Cattle raids
Because of the great benefit of combining one crop and one animal per tile, and because a civilization will tend to start with more food crops than animals, cattle raiding is a feared early strategy that can be employed against minor tribes or other civilizations. Getting a hold of your neighbor's sheep can sometimes make the difference between making the early game and falling far behind. Because of how important it is in the early game, it should not be overly difficult: you simply have to attack a semi-nomadic tribe somewhere in neutral lands, steel their sheep and run back home. Once the sheep is being bred safely in your lands, behold as Villages start breeding their own sheep, making them more well-nourished than before.
Cities are much smaller and more exploitative
There are no more city districts that take up half the map. Until the Modern Age, cities contain only a fraction of your population as the vast majority of people are Villagers working the countryside. Cities extract the surplus from the countryside to create monuments, buildings, armies and support specialists.
Surplus is extracted via taxation. Taxes can be paid as food directly to the cities or in the form of corvée (feudal forced labor, converts to hammers) – however, population increase will halt if you exploit the people too much. If they are not too oppressed (for instance under a policy of Serfdom), they could also choose to emigrate.
Population limits
As food increases, cities will grow but so will villages and tribes. The population cap for what a village can support is 4 population; for a tribe 2 population; for a hunter-gatherer band, never more than 1.
If a village or tribe grows beyond what it can support, the surplus population point will first of all try to migrate to a nearby tile and maintain the same occupation. If that is not possible, it may migrate to a different tile or a city.
A village can never migrate in its entirety, it must always maintain at least 1 inhabitant.
Population points are autonomous
Villagers and tribes are more autonomous than previously and you cannot simply reassign them to another tile as you like. You can build irrigation and roads for them which helps to spread the use of crops and animals. If a city is razed the villages and tribes remain, even if they suddenly find themselves on neutral lands.
Autonomy comes in three ranks:
- Villages are the least autonomous. They can be taxed in food and in hammers. They are very reluctant to emigrate, but may do so if their village is being pillaged by an enemy or if taxes are overbearing. If they feel completely cornered, they can also rise up in rebellion, raising military units of their own.
- Tribes are more autonomous. Because they are constantly moving, they cannot be brought in as forced labor (Hammers) but they can pay taxes (Food). They are more likely to emigrate if they don’t like government policies (a Bedouin tribe could just disappear deeper into the desert to avoid taxes). If cornered, they can also rise up to fight. Even if their population cap is at 2 they can still be formidable, because they can raise the entire tribe to fight and their strength value is higher than villages’. (If they breed Camels or Horses, they will naturally bring their animals into the fight as well.)
- Even more autonomous are Hunter-gatherers which move chasing some animal in the wild. They cannot even be taxed, but they can become herders if wild animals grow scarce. They recognize no suzerain and always prefer to flee rather than fight.
Domesticated crops and animals are improved with time. The more villages grow Rice or breed Pigs, the greater the chance that a higher-yield variant of Rice or Pigs will appear in one of the villages. Once it does, it will start spreading to surrounding villages and could eventually spread even across continents via trade routes.
For another example, suppose you start as Mongolia in the Ancient Era with access to Horses. These will be “Level 1” domesticated Horses, meaning that they are not yet large or strong enough to carry a grown man on its back, much less a knight in full armor. You can only use them for Chariots until the time you have “Level 2” Horses, when you can finally start training classical Horsemen or Mounted archers. For the plate-mail Knight or Cataphract, Level 3 is needed.
Climate zones matter
Needless to say, you cannot grow Rice in Scandinavia. Climate needs to become a thing, not just Terrain. And while there are many crops that can be grown for calories, Rice is by far the most efficient one, responsible for the huge populations in many Asian countries today. But there are many more differences between climate zones that make for an interesting game, it’s not just that the cold regions will be able to grow less crops and therefore have a smaller population.
Below are some ideas for how actual differences between climatic/geographical zones could be gamified to create a balanced gameplay. I don’t think all of them are great ideas and there are huge challenges around balancing all regions in a particular age, but perhaps some of the sketches could prove useful.
- Boreal/Cold temperate climate can only grow certain crops, limiting population growth, but has a wealth of forests that grow back quickly, allowing for higher production. In pre-modern times, charcoal from forests was also required for the making of iron tools and weapons, giving this region a military bonus. Natural disasters and tropical diseases are also very rare, making it easier to maintain civilization. (Applies to much of Canada, Northern Europe and Russia.)
- East Asian land is temperate, highly riverine and fertile, allowing for a large population. However, its selenium-poor soil makes it difficult to breed horses in this region, a crucial security risk in the pre-modern era. (Historically, this was a big problem for China.)
- Tropical Asia is the most fertile of all, however this comes at the cost of tropical diseases that aren’t as rampant in more temperate zones. Natural disasters are also more common, making it more difficult to build a long-term durable civilization (this applies more to Southeast Asia than to South America). Indian elephants are native to this area, with implications for construction and warfare. (Elephants cannot be domesticated and so cannot be spread like other resources.)
- Middle Eastern land combines high aridity with pockets of highly fertile river valleys. Historically, a very large proportion of domesticated crops and animals came from this region and this could perhaps be reflected in the game, giving this region a head start even as they will struggle to keep up mid-game due to the lack of arable land. This region could also see a boost end-game due to enormous reserves of fossil energy resources.
- The Steppe is vast, great for grazing animals, and if you have access to Horses you might just start planning your world conquest already. The cap on population growth is the worst of all regions though, because of lack of agriculture outside of oasis areas.
- The Temperate zone includes much of Europe, North America and parts of East Asia. It is balanced on all fronts, including forests, fertile grasslands and good access to fresh water. Cold winters mean that you cannot grow crops the year round as in tropical areas, limiting population growth. Not many domesticated crops or animals originated here, so you need some outside influences to get going.
- Sub-saharan Africa is one of the most difficult regions to build a civilization in, partly due to poor soils but also endemic diseases that strike at humans and livestock alike. However crops that do not need a lot of water can generally grow here and the endemic diseases mean that outside powers cannot invade very easily. (Native Africans have some genetic resistance to malaria and yellow fever which make them relatively more resilient.)
- Central and South America consists of a number of very diverse regions which could probably be included inside other regions. but deserves an honorable mention because such a large proportion of crops come from here, many from Mexico but also the potato from the Andes region. (Historically, the Mexican, Maya and Inca civilizations faced a paradox: Lack of domestic animals meant a lack of diseases that were rampant across Africa and Eurasia, such as smallpox, and also a lack of resistance to such diseases. This meant that populations could increase enormously over the course of hundreds of years, only to be hit catastrophically later on when the Europeans arrived. However, I don’t suppose this would be very fun to play.)
This article focuses primarily on the early part of the game. In fact, I long ago created a more fully fleshed out version of the same concept including cash crops, plantations, trade wars, and the relationship between raw produce and refined goods in the industrial age, but I think I will leave it here for now, see if it piques any interest at all.
PS. I said I will "drop it off here and leave it", but I will still take questions.
/zuzim
When this idea was first hatched, I was thinking in terms of the Health attribute present in Civ4 - combine both energy and protein foods to create a healthy population.
. It's just a big snowballing machine at this stage. Yet as many of your ideas resonate with what I’ve been working on, I’d be happy to share access if you’re interested. I haven't done so to many people, because I'm still very unsatisfied of its incompleteness, but it is playable for a couple of hours.
