When it comes to religion being spread to me I would like two things. 1, having an option of clearly "accepting" the new religion as my own (which may of course cause tension if several others/stronger religions are in place). 2, seeing clear benefits of accepting religious bonuses developed by someone else which would be far harder to develop on my own.
In Civ 6 founding your own religion with minimal investment is always more beneficial than to accept another religion. That´s even if I just leave it at vanilla level development.
I miss Civ 4 and the way you had to choose your State Religion (or even go No Religion at all and stop Isabella for being enraged towards me ^^)
Well, civilization series is famed for simulating progression, history of the human species from the dawn of time into the modern age. How do you see that without a technological progression by medium of a tech tree? Just curious.
It's a very narrow way of seeing human development, and some relationships are utterly arbitrary.
Like, why do we absolutely need to Archery before inventing Horseback Riding? Couldn't a civilization be able to ride horses without inventing a way to sling stakes at a far distance? Discovering horses should be enough to invent Horseback Riding, gatekeeping it behind Archery is nonsensical and utterly eurocentric. Or why should we wait until we invented Currency to be able to do Maths? A bartering economy would need advanced maths as much as a monetary one, especially if they're doing sciences like astronomy. Or you need Horseback Riding to invent Construction? What, people didn't thought about this if they aren't on the back of the horse? But on the other hand, being able to construct something is not necessary to build Buttress, apparently. But Buttress are apparently necessary to draw a map, because... of reasons?
And that's just the flagrant arbitrary decisions, but you could go even further: why do you need Scientific Theory in order to discover Sanitation? Romans had sewers, and Mesopotamians too, and countless ancient people had very strict hygiene standards. But, in Europe, we learnt to bath only after discovering the Scientific Method, so here we go.
And here the problems lies not solely in the architecture of the Tech Tree, but in its very design, its very core philosophy. Progress is a slow and erratic path that was terribly different from culture to culture. China discovered Gun Power in what we call the Classical Era, and yet here you cannot discover it before the Renaissance. The Incas never really used the wheel (or except in very specific instances) but noone than them knew how to build bridges over cliffs, but in this game you're forced to discover it no later than the Classical Era. Why would the Malians, lost in their desert with no coast to see, would need to have discovered Sailing, Celestial Navigation and Shipbuilding in order to build Buttress? I understand that being able to build ships might give you insight about how to build buttress, but making it a hard prerequisite is nonsense!
Progress should reflect the environmental and geopolitical hardships that the civilization had to go by. In what we call the Middle-Ages and beginning of the modern era, the Holy Roman Empire, China and the Incans had developed in ways that aren't comparable. In the Ancient times, how could one compare the Mayans, the Celts or the Horn of Africa. Here, every civ looks kind of the same because they all went through exactly the same technological challenges.
Describing an entire revamp would be too long here, but I had thought about it intensively and those are the major points:
- No more tech tree, as in no more techs that are hard-locked behind some other techs that you have to discover before researching the following one. Instead, all techs would have a certain percentage of chance to be discovered each unit of time (month, turn, whatever). "Complex" techs would be less lucky to be discovered of course, but, after all, Steam Power was discovered in Ptolemaic Egypt. But an empire discovering in the Classical Era would completely ruin the gameplay! Not if we...
- Interconnect techs waaaay more. Like, you might discover Steam Power, but without metallurgy, coal and economic incentives, it would just give you some culture, prestige, influence or fame (as in it's nice when the doors of a temple open like magic, but no real economic benefits). For another example, Harbors could be build as soon as you discover either Sailing, Shipbuilding, Navigation of Fishing, but each techs would give differents benefits to it: Fishing would make habors produce more food, Navigation more science, Sailing more money, Shipbuilding more production, etc.
- The interconnection will also serve to decide the probability of each tech being discovered. For example, let's say you have 1% to discover Shipbuilding each turn (rooky numbers). If, in the meantime, your discover Fishing, it goes up by 5%. With Sailing, 25%. With Navigation, 100% (because once you sail, fish and navigate, all you lack is just the arts of building ships).
- But it won't be necessary. Like, for example, if we follow Civ 6 tech tree, Scientific Method would give a +25% discovery chance for Sanitation, but nothing would prevent you to discover it before and built sewers.
- Cost should not scale, though, in this case. Like, you discover Sanitation in the Classical Era, the cost to build sewers should be the same as discovering it in the Modern Era. This way, you'd need to really be an empire as powerful as the Roman Empire to sacrifice the high costs of building sewers, but if you're weaker, perhaps wait a few centuries before doing it.
- In order to prevent too many completely impossible scenarios, some techs would have a probability of 0% is a previous tech hasn't be discovered. Like, submarines shouldn't appear if you have not at least Shipbuilding or Sailing.
- But many, many other sources of increasing the research of a technology should exist: a neighboring civ has it? And you trade with it? Endless possibilities.
- In order to not take away every agency from the player, the player will be able to nudge the scientific research in some directions, through actions or how they build their empire. Like, deciding to have a lots of merchants will greatly enhance the probability of discovering things like Money, Mathematics or Banking. We could even think about a "Pursue Research" action where the player decide to focus some efforts on a specific technology. All other techs would have a lesser probability to be discovered, but the one pursued would be greatly enhanced. Maybe lock it behind some other technology (like Scientific Method?) or specific infrastructures, like an academy or a museum of some sort?
- However, it shoudl need some "protection" to prevent players to directly research "Nuclear Power" right of the beginning. What I had in mind, is that each tech would exist in three "states": Unknown, Known, Discovered. An Unknown tech would be a tech that you empire doesn't even know that exist. You cannot focus on Nuclear Power if you don't even believe in atoms. A Known tech would be a tech you know exist but haven't researched yet. And a Discovered tech would be simply researched and you rip the rewards.
- For a tech to go from Unknown to Known, several ways could happens, and the "Random Tech and Civic Trees" could be a good inspiration. Environment could give you information about it (near the coast? Oh, if only there was a way to go over it and get all the fish an trade with far away land...), previous techs too (atoms exist? And could they break? Could we call it Nuclear Power?), a neighboring civ discovering it (or, what is this thing? They call it Paper? Perhaps we could reproduce something similar...).
It's already long enough, but I'm sure you get the idea. There is surely several ways it is clunky right now (I'm not a game designer), but it would give more emphasis on how each empire evolves rather than simply filling up beckers.