Broadway gives you a monopoly on hit musicals. We agree that's a slot that would be better occupied by something more international (Germany/Austria especially comes to mind -- I'm thinking how Vienna was the music capitol of the world for quite a stretch of time). We also agree it's a little unrealistic that only one civilization gets to produce artistic commodities for trade. But moreover, this is a crappy wonder anyway that has questionable usefulness.
Anyway, that's just one example. "More international wonders and leaders" would be a good selling point the way "we added popular requests like X, Y and Z" wouldn't. I also think it would be feasible because it doesn't involve content overload -- it means making more diverse use of Firaxis's valuable time and energy.
re: civil war
Mxzs has definitely realized that a sound implementation of civil war will require rethinking fundamentals like victory, and what the player competes for. The idea of separating culture from political control is a complex one so far, but it could also yield results. Keep talking...
I think the decision to make those wonders was based on finding ways to help players out in the late game. I once built Hollywood and Broadway and after I made deals with all of the AI it turned out to be a pretty penny. Which allowed me to invest more science, hurry production and catch up. Now in multiplayer this is probably not the case.
Re: Civil War
Note: This is separate from my rebel unit idea, as I don't see how they could fit in.
I am not very good at these things so if there is any confusion about what I am trying to say please let me know. Remember the point of this was to come up with a way to make civil war more fun and less of a drag on the player. I don't necessarily agree with that and I am not arguing that it should be this way just that it could.
Okay, now. Imagine if Civil War was not particularly a consequence you had to suffer but rather it was a choice that you made. Once you discover a certain technology you would have the choice to have a Civil War when you want too. Now lets not go ahead and say this is silly right away. Remember, we already have the ability to chose to have a revolution and anarchy, so it's not really that radical of an idea to suggest the same can be done for civil war. We chose to go through a turn of anarchy because it would lead to something better, something more appropriate, something more suitable for our current situation. The same can be done for civil war.
You might find that you over expanded. City Maintaince is high. Perhaps you are at the point where your units will strike soon, if not already. Right now you have choices, cut science spending, delete units, switch civics. We could make civil war an additional choice.
That is all. See I told you it wasn't very long.
Now here are some questions I have not yet addressed. And there are probably much more.
1) Why would a player chose civil war rather than go for other strategies? Obviously if it's the only choice he can make it at the moment, but other then that usually there are other things you can do to help fix your problems.
2) Let's say you determine that a civil war is in your best interest, how would the civil war look like? Would it be an actual war or would the empire just be divided without any actual action? If actual war would that just be annoying? If division does the player chose how many and which cities become independent? If random should it depend on how happy each city is?
3) How easy would it be to get those cities back? Considering that they are still "German" or "Chinese" or whoever you are playing as, would it easy to convert them back?
4) Will it be easy to program the AI to chose to enter Civil War when appropriate?
5) Does the new civ get a portion of the player's money or does it have to start from scratch?
The fifth one isn't really that important to answer. I mean most likely you keep all your money and the civ will just generate it's own revenue from it's cities. But, I have been struggling with the other questions.
I think they definitely pass the back of the box test, fortunately. The problem is a lot of the stuff that passes the back of the box test is hard to work out. Fortunately, when you show people the obstacles, it's usually the most passionate supporters of an idea who will rise to the challenge.
I think the idea of splitting your own empire is an interesting one. Like you said, Anarchy is something you willingly choose too. Now you just need a reason why you'd split your empire, instead of trying to pay the maintenance cost. After all, a large empire is not just the key to one victory condition, but is the indirect key to all victory conditions.
I'm sure there's other ways to make civil war work in Civilization too. But this one shows some potential!
Well, there are several things I can think of, however you will see that there are flaws.
1) You still get the culture points from the other civs. So if you are aiming for a cultural victory it might be to your desire to have multiple states as they would each be cheaper with multiple capitals. This is almost the same as where Mxzs was going but not quite. It is similar to how when you have a vassal it counts towards your domination victory.
2) For this we need to add in the features your cities could demand independance, but you never have to grant it to them. But you could get some type of diplomatic points for granting independance to your people. Ideas include an automatic spot on the UN ballot for UN secretary as well as the diplomatic victory and more voting points at the UN. Pluses with Civs who have the universial suffrage civic. But that doesn't seem like enough to be worth it. Plus it has little and perhaps even no value in multiplayer. Maybe a new diplomatic feature or mechanic will be needed.
3) Perhaps overexpansion could have more consequences than currently. This would make civil war more desirable. However, there would be the complaint that this just adds more drags and claims that civil war was forced on them.
4) From a military view, if you actually have to fight an opponet your units would gain experience and become stronger. This assumes that the rebeling side's military is automatically starts off weaker than the player. Which is actually somewhat true because most civil wars/rebellions start off as a small ideas with little support. The flaw: will fighting rebels and having to recapture your cities just be annoying?
There are still a few general questions that aren't exclusively linked to any of the above.
1) Assuming a civil war can be worked to be beneficial, there is still one major downside to splitting your empire, which is less beakers for research. The only thing I can think of to balance this is to have it that if one of the civs discovers it the other gets it as well. Or perhaps it would be best to leave this as a downside? The player would than have to make an "interesting choice", do you sacriface loss beakers for possible benefits? Since civil wars aren't forced there shouldn't be any complaints about this since you chose to enter civil war. However this raises the question of the problem that this will just prevent people from entering civil war.
2) I am still struggling on how civil war will look like. I have explored and posted ideas on why a player would chose to enter civil war and possible benefits, but not how it will look like.
3) Finally, can the AI be programmed to use civil war appropiately, at least for the higher difficulties?
I have always been of the opinion that Firaxis should develop a Civilization advanced....a bit more of an in depth game that would take a bit more immersion and management. Im not saying go crazy on the micro management but a game that puts in most peoples suggestions just so i feel like im not playing a bit of a kiddie game with Civ4.
You might find that you over expanded. City Maintaince is high. Perhaps you are at the point where your units will strike soon, if not already. Right now you have choices, cut science spending, delete units, switch civics. We could make civil war an additional choice.
This is a neat idea, and I want to think there's a way to make it work. I can think of two big problems it would have to overcome, though.
In the aftermath of a civil war, a large percentage of your cities are part of another civilization: its the equivalent of having 20% to 50% of your empire conquered by one of your competitors. Any problem that could be solved with a civil war, then, could be solved by declaring war on one of the AIs and evacuating some of your cities so they can take them over without firing a shot. Why would you ever do that?
You still get the culture points from the other civs. So if you are aiming for a cultural victory it might be to your desire to have multiple states as they would each be cheaper with multiple capitals. This is almost the same as where Mxzs was going but not quite. It is similar to how when you have a vassal it counts towards your domination victory.
This would make it different from regular foreign conquest, and (obviously!) I do like the thought of disentangling the political and the cultural. But because it's the kind of idea that can be greatly extended to cover more than just civil war scenarios, I'll concentrate on making that kind of extension.
If you are interested in making this kind of idea work, you will need to put limits on it, or else you'll just let the Infinite City Sprawl strategy in through the back door: Win a cultural victory by pumping out settlers and cities; hive off a bunch in a civil war; pump out some more settlers and cities; hive those off in a civil war; and so on.
Okay, if it's not obvious by now: I'm just thinking aloud and feeling my way around.
In any kind of radical redesign, it's probably best to keep the victory conditions in mind. After all, there's no use in coming up with something intricate if there's no good way to figure out whether or how the player has won. Whatever else you want to say about Civ, it has clear victory conditions.
In my first post in this sub-thread, I suggested that the player define his victory conditions. It is, I said, one of the features of cultures that they define their own ends, and if the player is going to be the avatar of a culture and not an empire he should have that power. But it's probably a good idea to give him some structure, the way the game currently lets the player aim for Conquest, Domination, Space Race, and Cultural victories.
Now, there are a couple of different ways that victory conditions could be structured for the player.
First, he could be given a set of discrete conditions, unrelated conditions and asked to choose some as his victory conditions for that game. Second, he could be given a choice between "cultural profiles" that each contain multiple victory conditions and choose one as his preferred victory condition. Third, he could be given a choice between certain specified conditions, but those conditions could be built in such a way that in practice he has to meet lots of smaller conditions.
What would each of these look like?
Discrete conditions
At the beginning of the game, imagine a "Victory Condition" screen that looks rather like the "Civics" screen in Civ 4. There are five columns, headlined "Politics," "Economics," "Religion," "Arts," and "Science." Under each of these are between three and six victory conditions. The player chooses one condition in each column: his goal is to construct a civilization that realizes all of those five conditions. (This would allow players to mix-and-match; there could, literally, be hundreds of possible combinations to try out.) Each condition in each category would be narrowly tailored, something that he could reach more or less independently of reaching any of the others. One of the conditions under Science might be "Discover all techs."
Complex conditions
I call the second type "complex conditions" because they could not be achieved without achieving other, logically independent goals. They might be arranged in a grid like that imagined above, but they could not be arranged in the same categories, since each condition would not be possible without achieving conditions that belong in more than one of those categories. For instance, one of victory conditions might be "Build and launch a spaceship." That's a goal that stretches across the Scientific, Economic, and Political categories: The player would need to discover almost all the knowledge in the tech tree; build an advanced economy capable of constructing the ship; and (as projects like this are usually undertaken by governments) would require that he have control of a powerful, independent nation.
(This last example, by the way, shows how easy it would be to fold the two classic Civ victory conditions into the new game.)
Cultural profiles
Most players like that the civilizations in Civ have different attributes. But some of us dislike that they are given those attributes at the start instead of achieving them. If the Egyptians are spiritual (or whatever), it's because they've created a culture that has stimulated their spirituality, not because they started with it.
The third possible arrangement of victory conditions would take this idea as its base: The player's goal would be to create a spiritual/industrious/militaristic/whatever culture, and his score in doing so would be generated by his ability to complete certain tasks. An "expansionist" culture, for instance, might have "Build a spaceship" as one of its goals.
I think the last-named would probably be the easiest way to go. For starters, it would also probably be quite difficult to come up with genuinely discrete and independent conditions like those imagined in the first category: too many possible conditions presuppose success at a lot of tasks. It also keeps but reconfigures an element already in Civ, and it's a more interesting kind of condition than just recapitulating something like "Build a spaceship." Moreover, it would give players an excuse to closely recapitulate the actual histories of various civilizations if those victory conditions were attached to their Civ namesakes. Right now, for instance, there's not much to choose from between the Mongols and the Egyptians (save their starting talents), given that neither has much of a shot at winning except by training for the conquer-the-world-or-go-into-space victory condition. On the other hand, if playing the Egyptians meant you had to go for a victory condition that did not logically include either of those, but instead meant playing toward a goal not so different from the way Egyptian society actually developed, you could actually get some variety in the game by playing different historical actors instead of turning all of them into Alexander the Great.
Nonetheless, I'm going to continue to focus on trying to develop some discrete conditions, because that will helpful in trying to figure out how to realize or create the victory conditions that would go with a cultural profile.
I do too. The only problem there is the complaint that dealing with rebels are "not fun". But like I said we can just allow the player to adjust the rate of rebels as they already do with Barbarians. Personally, I don't see a way to make those who find rebels to be annoying to find it fun. You either like having to crush rebels or you don't.
re: cultural victory benefiits from civil war
Yes. It appears that the cultural idea would make civil wars overpowered for a cultural victory.
In past post, as well as this one, I have just been blabbering out ideas to get people thinking about them. Anyway some ideas, which I am sure are just as flawed as the ideas I posted above, are:
1) Limiting the conditions on which you can have a civil war. Perhaps your advisor would have to propose it to you before you can do it.
2) Maybe add more of a downside to civil war. Like I said before, if civil war is a choice then you can't really complain about the downsides because you chose it.
Rebels are kind of fun. But we already have Partisans in previous versions of Civ. I'd welcome them back, but I'm not sure it would pass the back of the box test. Maybe more like a "mid level" feature, like health, or collateral damage.
What people really want is a game of civ where new civilizations are born midgame all the time -- at least, that's the impression I get from a lot of the civil war threads. It's not the war they want. It's not the punishment for overexpansion. It's the rise of new civilizations.
(PS: even though I'm silent on the other things you guys are talking about, I'm liking where you're going... just curious where the conclusion will lead, or what roadblocks will come up. And there's no hurry either. This is just a friendly discussion.)
Well, I did somewhat address this by saying rebels will have all functions of regular units including capturing cities. However that isn't quite the same as simply having a new civ emerge.
I do agree that having new civilizations born midgame is what a lot of people want however there is also another big request.
The other people who want civil wars/rebellions believe that there should be some sort of political stability score. There are also those who want there to be more interaction with your people. There is the argument that right now it is too easy to build an empire with a happy population. In Civ III it was somewhat addressed with the happy, content, discontent, model, but that mechanic recieved plenty of complaints.
Another idea that just popped into my head would be some sort of return, or more of a ravamp, of the regicide feature, which was an optional feature and could remain so. It doesn't need to be exactly the same. However, I immediately think of several flaws so I will wait this one out for the moment.
The main problem is you are taking away the player's choice at the begining of the game to pick his leader. I tried to think of a way to counter this problem but the best I could come up with is that you still get too chose from a list of leaders, sort of like an election. This would require though that rather then playing through the eyes of a leader, you play through the eyes of the people.
This opens up a whole new area in desperate need of exploration.
In a way I want to say for coming up with that idea because it opens up this new possibility.
That's a good point. Besides the fact that people want new civs to emerge, they also want to have more things to do in their own empire. That's important too. Whether these two requests should be tackled together or separately is also something people should think about.
I just would like to say being more accurate does not mean the game can not be simple. I think domestication of plants and animals is not all that hard. I think the culture should influence revolts. Culture is suppose to be your identity that binds your people together, and believe this should be able to improve with technologies like nationalism. You should start as a nobody and became a leader of certain group in my opinion and there should be no preset civs except in scenarios. How about sometimes being just booted as the leader from angry citizens and the game is over?
Because gods don't get booted. Gods do the booting.
(I know what you mean. Still, part of the appeal of the game is that, ha ha, you get to mess with the people in your civ, but the people in your civ, ha ha, don't get to mess with you.)
Civilization is most developed as a political/war game: the construction of an imperial power is the player's central task. If you're going to try coming up with alternate victory conditions, it's easiest to start by thinking about political victory conditions.
In Civ, there are two: world conquest and world domination. These seem easy enough to carry over into a redesign. But you need to think about at least four large issues first. (1) What is the relation between an empire (a political unit) and a civilization (a cultural one)? (2) How is the cultural control of a city to be represented? How is the political control to be represented? (3) What is the relation between cultural and political control in a city? Will they affect each other? (4) How will cultural borders and political borders be drawn?
Fortunately, not all of these concrete and finalized answers. With some we need only come up with rough and general reflections. Taking them in order
What is the relation between an empire and a civilization?
This series of posts started with the observation that the classic game conflates these two concepts, and that history rarely records instances of cultures and civilizations being in exact correspondence. However, if you take the notion of civilizations seriously as a historical unit, you do notice that they almost invariably collapse into what are called "universal states." In fact, if you count up the "empires" that sprinkle history, universal states seem to comprise the bulk of them. So it wouldn't be much of a stretch to say that the classic "imperial" form Civ should model is the "universal state."
That state, in turn, can be realized to greater or lesser extents. At its most extreme, the culture may try to project or construct a universal state that will not only encompass all of its own territory, but will conquer or dominate the rest of the world. The culture itself may be "imperial" in the sense that, not content with mastering its own fate, it may attempt to exert political control over all the other cultures on the planet, or at least to dominate them. The former view might be compared to the most extreme "one-worlders" (who envision a supreme United Nations imposing an enlightened, progressive political agenda upon the entire planet) or Islamic fantasists (a worldwide Caliphate); the latter can be compared to the Chinese concept of an empire that does not directly rule the surrounding states but which is pre-eminent among them and whose superiority they must acknowledge.
Less grandiose visions would be content with an empire that simply embraced all the lands the culture itself occupies, or would be content that some part of those lands had a political existence independent of foreign control. At the other end of the scale, a culture might simply not care whether or not it had any political expression or not.
Spoiler:
The above reflections apply only to states that are expressions of an underlying culture. But there have been imperial states that are not even latently "universal" in nature, most prominently the nineteenth century European empires. How would the game handle those?
Remember that the reconfigured game would ask the player to take the part of "cultural [not imperial] avatar. So imagine such an avatar looking over the millennia-long history of Europe. What would stand out in importance?
Most prominently, it would be the continent's immense scientific and technological development; its development of such characteristic arts as the cathedral, the symphony, and the motion picture; its material fecundity and the construction of an economic system that for the first time has alleviated mass poverty and created the expectation of continually expanding prosperity; and its tremendous impact upon the rest of the globe. True, much of that impact has come through imperial channels, but the actual imperial history of Europe is so slight that this imaginary avatar would hardly even notice it. Consider:
European "imperial" expansion took place more or less in two waves. The first, which lasted from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, was driven by trade and (to a lesser extent) a crusading, proselytizing impulse. The trans-oceanic empires erected in the Americas and southeast Asia were economic zones relying either upon trade or the exploitation of resources (commodities such as tobacco or metals such as gold). In a world containing European, Turkic, Arab, Indian, Malay, and Chinese pirates, it would be foolish to try establishing trading colonies without bringing an army with you, which is why they had proto-imperial forms. But the drive was economic, not imperial.
The second wave, which occurred in the last half of the nineteenth century, was much more short-lived. There was, notoriously, little profit in it, and most of the scrambles were carried out either in the hopes of getting money or as moves on the domestic or international diplomatic chessboards. The surprise is not that these empires were ephemeral, but that they lasted as long as they did; the Europeans shook them off the way some men shake off their first wives, as an embarrassment they are tired of looking at.
Insofar as a reconstructed game should model these things, they should be modeled as economic, cultural, or religious entities, not as political entities. This would also spare the designers a great deal of pain in trying to model situations in which cultures are divided into multiple, competitive empires. Each civilization should contain only one empirethe "universal empire" that the player himself is in charge of constructing.
How is the cultural control of a city to be represented? How is the political control to be represented?
Whenever a city is part of his culture, a player needs to share in some aspect of its control. When it is part of his empire, he needs to share in some aspects of its control. What does this mean?
At the very least, it means that when he does not control both, he should not be able to choose from all the items in the city's production queue. Clearly, some buildings, such as barracks, are political in nature, and the ability to build them would go to whatever player had conquered that city. Equally clearly, the ability to build the most advanced kind of units would be a political choice. But most buildings are a murky kind of thing: Is a bank mostly a political institution or a cultural one? What about a temple?
Probably it would depend upon the kind of government that is in effect. The most oppressive and totalitarian governments (which need not be modern; see my earlier snide comments about the Byzantines) tend to turn everything into a department of the state; the more liberal governments would probably nationalize only the barracks, the jail, and the courthouse. What you could build would probably have to depend upon the civics you have in effect.
For this reason, if no other, it would not be a good idea to have two production queuesone for political builds and one for cultural buildsin the city design. Rather, items would share a single box and would be "ghosted" out depending upon how limited the player's control of the city is.
Spoiler:
An aside, for further development: The economic model of the game might be updated alongside this separation of the cultural and the political. Economic functions have both a cultural and a political aspect to them. A thought: Those economic functions which the state mostly addresses should be managed at the national level, not the city level; and many of the features of city management should be bumped up to the "national" level. In an old post, Trade-peror makes a remark about cities being combined into "markets." This is a concept that deserves exploration.
What is the relation between cultural and political control in a city? Will they affect each other?
Basically, this is a question about "culture flips." Would an empire that controls a city not of its culture be in danger of losing it? Could it change the culture of the cities it controls?
My intuitions tell me the answers are Yes. More detailed:
Culture flips: Breakaway cities would be less of an aggravation in the redesign, simply because political control is not the be-all and end-all of the game. But, depending upon circumstantial factors inside of particular games, it should be possible for cities to break away, if they are under the political control of an empire not affiliated with their own culture. That doesn't mean, however, that they would join another empire. (The ancient Judeans revolted against Rome; but they had no intention (that I know of) of adhering to the Parthian empire.) Such a revolt, then, would be scarcely worse than the old "civil disorder" event; it would be worse only in that the player would actually have to battle his way back into it rather than manipulating happiness levels.
Reverse culture flips: Conquering a city would not, as it does now, destroy or otherwise replace the old culture. But a conqueror should be able to sap the old culture. At the very least, the conqueror should be able to destroy the buildings (like temples) that sustain or increase the city's cultural output, making it easier for his own culture to irradiate the conquest and make a gradual conversion. In an earlier post I said the game would need to realize some kind of "culture warfare." Here is one way (among the several that would have to be created) of doing that: a conquering player can suppress a local culture by demolishing cultural broadcasters. This would, incidentally, be a slower and less radical tactic than the usual raze-the-city-before-it-flips-back tactic, but toward the same end.
How will cultural borders and political borders be drawn?
The simplest answer, at the current time, is to say that cultural borders would be a product of cultural radiation (as it is in Civs 3 and 4). Political borders would be a return to the "fat cross" borders of Civs 1 and 2. There might be a way that empires could annex individual squares outside of their "fat crosses," perhaps by building colonies or forts. But political and cultural boundaries should be allowed to spill over each other without affecting each other. The ability to build cities or maneuver units would be governed solely by political boundaries, though it would probably be a foolish idea to build a city inside another civ's cultural boundaries. However cultural "radiation" wound up working, it's a likelihood that it would wind up converting such a city.
Putting it all together, can we say anything about how a set of "political" victory conditions might be realized?
First, any attempt to conquer or dominate the world would naturally include attempts to conquer any cities belonging to the player's own culture. Any goals less than that should be aimed at conquering or dominating only the player's own cultural sphere. Therefore, I'd propose the following four possible victory conditions:
World Conquest: Conquer all the cities in the world.
World Domination: Conquer enough cities in the world to encompass X% of the world population.
Universal State: Conquer all the cities that share your culture.
Political independence: Ensure that at least one city in your culture is not politically controlled by a foreign AI.
As noted, however, there are other kinds of empire; these are better modeled, however, as forms of economic control, and I'll turn to them when I start talking about the economic model in the game.
Spoiler:
I noted above that the player should think of himself as a cultural avatar, and asked the reader to imagine an avatar looking down upon "European" civilization. The player might choose one of the various independent "cities" (the equivalent of England, France, or Spain, say) as an "instrument" to use in unifying the culture politically. Whether he did or not, though, he wouldn't be indifferent to their international behavior. Do they fight amongst themselves? Do they try to conquer areas outside of the culture? Since, by hypothesis, the player does not politically control these cities, he cannot manage their militaries, but he should be able to exercise some control. Part of this control might be realized through "civics" like settingssetting whether or not his cities attack each otheror by letting him create special military units (like Conquistadors or Armed Merchants) that let him extend those cities' borders in order to further his overall cultural expansion.
To facilitate these, I'd suggest setting the following conditions on political control and the behavior of "independent" cities:
1. Less than full politico-cultural control would lead to a restricted amount of control over what the city can build. Different types of control would give him different abilities to build, maintain, or destroy infrastructure. Cities that he does not politically control would function like "barbarian cities." There would be no diplomatic contact between them.
2. Special civics would let him affect the amount of fighting that happens between the cities in his culture, letting them either act purely defensively or aggressively. Clearly, the negative effects of intra-cultural would need to be offset by positive effects; or, alternately, setting those cities to act purely defensively would come with a high negative cost.
3. Some cultural units could be produced in any city that he culturally controls, and these could be used to extend political borders by conquering foreign cities (cities not part of the culture). The purpose, of course, would be to secure certain advantages to the culture as a whole without having to put together a full universal state first.
4. It should be theoretically possible for the player to still build military units even if he has no cities under his political control. This could be done with a hard-wired mechanic that generates "rebels" or "guerillas" in lands that he culturally controls, and which he could then use to try conquering one or more cities as a political base.
5. Economic control would be split between local and national levels; A "universal state" would tend to function like a "super-city" containing all the politically controlled cities as undifferentiated parts.
In general form: Players would start with a single city that was under their cultural but not political control. They would, however, be able to build and send out settlers, which he could use to found cities. These, too, however, would not be under his political control. The possibility of political control would only arise with the discovery of a tech or by generating some level of special points, which would generate a Great Leader. Moving this Leader into a city and having him join it would give the player political control of it. From this point, he would be in a position to begin conquering the other cities, using a mixture of military and civics settings to make the process easier.
So long as he did not have full control of all his cultural cities, though, he would still be able to exercise some control over those other cities, even to the extent of building certain kinds of military units that he could to improve his overall cultural domains by conquering/settling new cities. In the limit, he might even be able to "recreate" a culture like that of "Modern Europe," in which a mass of politically independent cities that are part of his culture could carve out large foreign empires for themselves. Control of these foreign cities being a second-order degree of control (he has only partial control of the cities that themselves only have partial control of the foreign cities), his ability to control those other cities would be even more circumscribed, perhaps only to the point that he could manipulate or influence them culturally but not in any other way.
Holy ****, Mxzs. That's the kind of idea that I was hoping this thread would generate. Even reading the first paragraph, I'm like "hmm... two separate forms of control..." and you hit me with the "two production" queues thing that I'm not even sure who thought of it first. Those are the traits of a good writer and thinker, who knows how to pull a reader onto the same page.
All I'll say is this: the idea that military dominance gets you only partial control is a vastly interesting idea. Especially since it also means that a conquered player can still play as a spiritual or cultural guide of their people under someone else's political rule -- which might actually be a LOT of fun to try.
The key to the idea is this: it needs to be simple to understand. As you start to discuss which buildings will be controlled by who under which civics, my eyes start to glaze over. The divide needs to be simple. I'm thinking, the conqueror gets control over resources, units, and the construction of units. Everything else belongs to the people. (And maybe one or two civics could have exceptions: like a mercantilist would also be able to build markets and banks in conquered civilizations that don't already have them. But certainly not micro-rules for every civic choice.)
Anyway. Holy smokes. This is a really good idea -- but one that necessarily challenges the fundamentals of the franchise, and could easily lead down a dead end if it gets too complicated.
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for coming up with that idea because it opens up this new possibility.
