Continue 'Building' through Modern Era

[Snuffleupagus]

Normally I am a strong proponent of the value of the 'less is more' theory of game design. I mostly love what ciV has done to streamline the game and keep it compelling. However, I'm going to throw that theory out for this post. More is more!

One complaint about Civ is that the late game can bog down. Some of us really enjoy modern war. With the addition of air power the combat can be fun. But, I think almost everyone can agree that the late (and to some extent mid) game lacks the appeal of the early part of the game.

When the game starts you are building an empire, expanding and growing, and you have a hand in literally guiding the construction of your civilization. Eventually, however, the empire is built. The world is explored. Workers sit idly by, waiting to build railroads, or for the odd tech to require some oil wells, or uranium mines. Cities are less dynamic. You choose from a set of buildings or units, but there is little dynamic interaction.

So I'm wondering if people have idea for ways to feel like you are continuing to 'build' your civilization, even as the game continues. As I said at the top, I'm throwing out ideas that probably violate the 'less is more' theory of ciV, but I hope it will spark some discussion.

IDEAS:

Continued Worker Improvements

Anytime any tech or policy improves the output of a tile improvement, a worker has to be placed on that square to build the improvement. Get fertilization? Great, but a worker has to build the 'fertilize farm' improvement in a tile before it gets the benefit.

PROS:
- give you something to do with workers for the entire game
- force players to prioritize which cities would get tile improvements first
- add strategy regarding number of workers to keep during game

CONS:
- requires more micro at a time when empires can already be getting large and have more units and cities
- players may automate their workers anyway, taking away the feel desired feel of building
- could be difficult to represent the scaled improvement graphically. This both makes it difficult logisitcally, and dulls the feel that you are still 'building.'

Immigration

Create a late game civilian unit which represents immigration. Could spawn in capital as the result of happiness, be gift from city states, be built like a regular unit, or appear after the accumulation of a certain number of empire immigration points (which could be gotten from happiness, buildings and policies). The immigrant unit could then be used to add to the population of any city.

PROS:
- late game city growth based on other criteria than just food
- allows late game cities to grow and catch up to older cities, increasing the incentive to found what are often underpowered cities

CONS:
- balance! not sure how they would work
- making the choice as to how to use them compelling. a pure +1 pop benefit would almost always be used in your best city, rather than outlining cities. the implementation would have to present genuine choice to the player

Remote Wonder Sites

Visually some Wonders could be constructed outside of cities. Initially I was just thinking of the Appollo Program for this. So the construction of that wonder would generate a unit, which when used on the map within your territory would build the wonder at that locaiton. Then as you build your space ship parts you could visually see it being built on the map (or physically have to bring the space ship parts from the city where they are built to the wonder on the map).

This could be done with other national wonders as well, could effect the output of the tile it's on, and increase combat strength of units within two tiles by 10%.

PROS:
- something different
- added strategy to invading enemy territory (or defending yours)

CONS:
- mostly aesthetic
- what happens when someone nukes one of these spots?

Continued Exploration

(I'm not convinced by this one, mostly because I don't know about implementation.)

That initial sense of explorationis great in ciV, but it goes away quick (because everything is explored). In reality human civilization continued exploring exploring throughout history. One way to try to keep the desire to explore would be to make resources only appear if you move a unit within line of sight after you have the tech to reveal that resource.

PROS:
- continuing sense of excitement over what might be over that next hill

CONS:
- more micro! constantly running scouts all around places you've already been a half dozen times
- hard to keep track where you've been after which techs

Corporations

Probably the best concept of something dynamic to do in late game. Plus, I loved that they gave a bonus for more of an identical resource. These have been discussed elsewhere, so I won't try to propose a specific implementation.

Cold War

(I've thought that there should be a goold cold war mod sense cIV.)

Perhaps part of the porblem with 'building' in the modern age is that it doesn't represent the realistic flow of actual history. Modern countries grow and shrink through international sway and influence.

When one Civilization's score passes set thresholds above another civ's score it could gain special diplomatic options. It would be able to force purchase that civilizations resources. Basically the smaller civs would take a step to being city states.

The primary option that comes to mind is 'puppet war' where a civilization would agree to go to war with a specific civ after the higher score Civ gave them a predetermined number of advanced units.

Ideas for other special diplo options?

PROS:
- something to do adding strategy

CONS:
- Current diplomacy is limitted and doens't work quite right, can we really add to it?
- What would be the strategic advantage of this move?


Others?

Please comment an critque my ideas, or add your own ideas for what could be done to continue the sense of building and expanding an empire into the late game.

 

[ArcaneSeraph]

Normally I am a strong proponent of the value of the 'less is more' theory of game design. I mostly love what ciV has done to streamline the game and keep it compelling. However, I'm going to throw that theory out for this post. More is more!

Like Homer's spirit guide said, "If anything, you should get more possessions. You don't even have a computer." So yeah more is more! I am a strong proponent of creative ideas so keep em coming.

Continued Worker Improvements

Interesting. I like this one. I think that you could eliminate pretty much all of the microing involved by having a special automate command "auto upgrade improvements". It wouldn't build anything new but would upgrade existing ones like you suggested. Improved farms, improved mines, etc. I agree if you automate in this way it feels like you aren't doing as much but still you can further customize your cities and such which is always a good thing, automated or not.

Immigration

This is just off the top of my head but what would happen if the immigrants came from your neighbour civs? Say if your culture is superior to theirs people want to live in your empire so randomly immigrants can appear on your border as a result. Alternately if your culture is too weak, you could lose pop in your cities. You could also do this as like war refuguees and such from an unhappy / warmongering empire.

This idea could also improve the rather dismal great artist. If it could be used to 'bomb' several citizens out of an city, it might be more useful at times. A 'friendly' attack .

Remote Wonder Sites

It's okay but I'm more into gameplay stuff .

Continued Exploration

This feels kind of like a second wave of luck to me. You find some resources after you unlock the tech but you can find some additional ones by exploring around. I don't mind it.

An alternate idea though. What about having your workers do a 'exploration' of a tile? An exploration has a chance to reveal a certain resource based on the tile type and what techs you have available. It kind of reminds me of Dominions if you've ever played that game. Searching for magic sites.

Corporations

Maybe. I didn't like the massive microing in the last game. If it was implemented in a better way I'd like it.

Cold War

This might be hard to implement properly until they fix the diplomacy. I'll get back to you then .

Anyways... some good stuff!

 

[Ramstorp]

Maybe you could get some extra happiness, science, or culture for having explorers go on tourism trips to discover world wonders similar to the natural wonder discovery boost.
Also, maybe resources shouldn't become in demand (or even tradable) until a scout goes to a far off land and sees a improved resource.

Also it might be interesting if you would be allowed to build something in cities that belong to other civs. Ex. America builds McDonald's in Paris which increases American gold and culture while at the same time increasing French happiness and production or something. I was thinking that in this way certain civs can increase their dominance over the world without actually invading every country, similar to how it happened during the cold war.

 

[awesome]

great improvements are an idea that have been thrown around a lot on here and i think i'm finally buying it as a concept, as long as most of them in the second half of the game. i also kind of like the exploration idea.

Also it might be interesting if you would be allowed to build something in cities that belong to other civs. Ex. America builds McDonald's in Paris which increases American gold and culture while at the same time increasing French happiness and production or something. I was thinking that in this way certain civs can increase their dominance over the world without actually invading every country, similar to how it happened during the cold war.

that would be filed under corporations, though civ 4 didn't have buildings for them, other than the headquarters. might not be a bad addition.

 

[Matches]

Several years ago I wrote up as part of a larger scheme that would include nationalities, a mechanism for immigration. The basics essentially were that unhappy citizens in a city, on any given turn, have a chance of becoming an "immigrant" - a unit would spawn in that city and make way for a foreign one, usually with a high total culture in the civ, and with attractive traits. So an unhappy citizen because of overcrowding would migrate to a city with lower population. If it was due to pollution, it could go to a cleaner city, etc.

The system assigned a "nationality" to every unit of population in the game, so if an immigrant appeared on one of your cities' doorsteps, you could choose to accept or not accept them -- accepting them gave you the obvious boost, but cause temporary unhappiness among natural-born citizens.

Something like this would also create an option for a great American UA, (since the Americans have always had struggles), call it "The Land of Opportunity" and increase the likelihood of receiving immigrants by 50% or somesuch.

 

[Camikaze]

On continued worker improvements, I find it quite an interesting idea, but I think the cons outweigh the pros. Specifically, the tedious micromanagement. That alone makes the idea kinda annoying. Building a farm once is enough work without essentially having to go and build it again.

With immigration, I think micromanagement is again a concern with your idea. I heartily agree with the idea of some sort of migration mechanic, but doing that in unit form is introducing an unnecessary layer of tedium. Population generally aren't represented by units, either.

The remote wonder site is intriguing, and could fit in with an idea that was proposed a while back about having wonders as tile improvements (at least, IIRC that was the idea; if not then I've got dibs on the patent ). But I'm not sure what actual advantages that this would bring outside of ensuring that certain tiles are fought for as well as certain cities, and I'm not sure that that's enough to justify a change.

Continued exploration is another idea which I like in some ways but again think is too heavy on micromanagement. Yes, later game exploration could probably do with something extra (although to be fair, I generally have a fair bit of exploring to do up until the modern era; the problem seems to be that there aren't really many great benefits to exploring widely).

So for those ideas, my responses might sound rather negative. But they're not meant to be! I do like the thought behind them, it's just the specifics you've suggested I think might be too heavy on the micromanagement side of things.