Generic Civs Revisited

[climat]

I agree that the two should not be allowed to mix with each other. However, it could possibly be a Game Option set at game creation. Choosing this option would cause any Civ selected to turn into a generic one based on the region (European, Asian, etc) that the base Civ is from. Could it cause confusion? Possibly, but I think having the option present would be worth it for people who would not like to play under this direction change. After all, what this Mod is all about is having more choices.

I agree. You can satisfy everyone by making it an option. We already have an option that makes leaders generic(Developing Leaders with No positive traits and No negative traits) and I didn't see any complain about it.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Pity that the option screen is after the civ naming screen.

I have not had enough free time to figure out how to pop up a new option screen before everything else after you select C2C. It would have to be before the Custom Game and Play Now screens since this would require them to be changed a lot.

 

[pi4t]

First of all there are cultures you can get before sedentary lifestyle so that would not work out well. Second South America has alots of types of climates not just Amazon Jungle, there is Savanna-like Pampas, High Andes Mountains and even the cold Glacial south near Antarctica.

Well, your first point shows my lack of familiarity with the mod! Still, the concept should still work fine, the tech at which the cultures can be built just needs to be pushed back a bit. Or those early cultures could be built by any civilisation, of course, as an alternative.

Regarding your second point, that's true, but I was trying to think of what it's like in the middle of the continent. That way you won't get the wonder being built in the 'cold glacial south', and only covering half the area you'd expect it to. If you feel that that's a bit awkward, though, then there's no need to have requirements in terms of terrain at all. I was just trying to encourage the cultures to be built in the appropriate places, but assuming the AI can be made to understand, this shouldn't be too big an issue as you're likely to go for the continent which gives you the most cultures you can use on the terrain around you.

 

[Hydromancerx]

Regarding your second point, that's true, but I was trying to think of what it's like in the middle of the continent. That way you won't get the wonder being built in the 'cold glacial south', and only covering half the area you'd expect it to. If you feel that that's a bit awkward, though, then there's no need to have requirements in terms of terrain at all. I was just trying to encourage the cultures to be built in the appropriate places, but assuming the AI can be made to understand, this shouldn't be too big an issue as you're likely to go for the continent which gives you the most cultures you can use on the terrain around you.

My point was that each region cannot be simplified by a specific type of terrain. It would be like saying Africa should be Desert since they have the Sahara or North America should be Plains since it has the Great Plains.

As for you last point, DH brought this up as a great example of say Egyptians are a flood plain culture highly tied to the rise and fall of the Nile River. As such Egyptian culture was given Desert and Flood Plains as their terrain requirements. This stops having say Polar Egyptians. Likewise the Inuits require Ice terrain so not to have Desert Inuits. Culture units also take advantage of this fact such as the Sioux require Grassland or Plains terrain and have a Mounted unit that has bonuses to that terrain. Likewise the Phoenicans require a coastal city and can produce Phoenician Bireme ships.

Overall I am satisfied with how most of the culture wonders are set up. I continually tweak and adjust as more are added but they have been working out well so far. At any rate this toipic is about civs and not the culture wonders.

 

[MagnusIlluminus]

Pity that the option screen is after the civ naming screen.

I have not had enough free time to figure out how to pop up a new option screen before everything else after you select C2C. It would have to be before the Custom Game and Play Now screens since this would require them to be changed a lot.

It isn't if you choose Custom Game. Which everyone should be doing anyway so as to start in prehistoric.

Agreed that it would be nice to get an option picking screen before anything else, but it doesn't seem likely. Aside from possibly having a different executable for each version. Actually, could that work? That is, have an exe that instead of loading up with the baseline Civs loads up with the generic ones?

Even if that is not possible, an option (available in the Custom Game menu) could work much like the 'Developing Leaders' option does and remove all normal characteristics (leader name & city names primarily) from whatever you selected for your starting Civ, aside from possibly the 'region' (European, Asian, etc) that it's from.

I think this may have been suggested in an earlier thread, but if not, I just had a thought about naming the initial, generic Civs. Name them by a combination of their Region and their Traits. Admittedly it could be a bit unwieldy being called the "Spiritual Industrial Megalomaniac Europeans", but it would be very descriptive. Each could be shortened to a single letter, or a pair. Then the previous example could be either "SIME" or "SpInMeEu" either of which is still reasonably informative, and could occasionally be unintentionally funny.

 

[Hydromancerx]

I think this may have been suggested in an earlier thread, but if not, I just had a thought about naming the initial, generic Civs. Name them by a combination of their Region and their Traits. Admittedly it could be a bit unwieldy being called the "Spiritual Industrial Megalomaniac Europeans", but it would be very descriptive. Each could be shortened to a single letter, or a pair. Then the previous example could be either "SIME" or "SpInMeEu" either of which is still reasonably informative, and could occasionally be unintentionally funny.

Yeah but what happens if you use the trait options such as no positive traits or no negative traits? One could start with no traits at all and thus have no name then? And what happens when you gain or loose traits?

 

[MagnusIlluminus]

Yeah but what happens if you use the trait options such as no positive traits or no negative traits? One could start with no traits at all and thus have no name then? And what happens when you gain or loose traits?

Good points. Yeah, if no traits were used at all (or Developing), we'd be back to just Region. Which would mean that there would be no difference between the various 'European' factions other than their aura color. Well there we go then. If there are no traits currently, it would reference the aura color, as you were proposing anyway.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no way for a Civ to gain or lose traits during the game if the game is not using the Developing Leaders option. If I've missed something feel free to mention it. If DL were in use, then the program would just have to adjust the descriptors accordingly. In any event, this would go away when the Civ makes it's first Culture Wonder as you'd then be known as that. (Sorry, I forgot to mention that part of the idea before.)

 

[bill2505]

i love this idea guys ! but only if
1 when you take a culture you change ,the name of your cities(more for the ai this) , the name of the leader so not tigranes for france,the name of you civilazation,flag,the models of the cities

 

[Flying Mathias]

Based of of Androrc's ideas from the earlier thread, perhaps we could have some sort of "culture tree" like this?

Spoiler :

So you'd have the <colour> Human Tribe, and after researching cultural identity, you would get an event to pick one of the "base" cultures, ie, N. American, European, etc. After that, your culture would be based on your surrounding. So, if you picked European culture, and your city was on a coast by a hill, you would get Latin culture. Then, at a certain tech point, your culture would advance further based on your surroundings. So, if you had Latin culture and had a city in a forest with grapes, you would get French culture. We could keep going even further, ie, splitting French culture into Parisian, Burgundian, Occitain, etc.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Good points. Yeah, if no traits were used at all (or Developing), we'd be back to just Region. Which would mean that there would be no difference between the various 'European' factions other than their aura color. Well there we go then. If there are no traits currently, it would reference the aura color, as you were proposing anyway.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no way for a Civ to gain or lose traits during the game if the game is not using the Developing Leaders option. If I've missed something feel free to mention it. If DL were in use, then the program would just have to adjust the descriptors accordingly. In any event, this would go away when the Civ makes it's first Culture Wonder as you'd then be known as that. (Sorry, I forgot to mention that part of the idea before.)

If they were cultural traits I could see it but I still think it'd be kinda weak to name off that basis. We aren't the United States of Arrogance (though... perhaps we should be ) But more importantly, the developing leader traits are supposed to indicate the traits of the leader rather than the traits of the people.

The idea to rename/redefine to generic on load if an option is established is good but it has a hitch... it would mean you'd have a lot of the same named, same colored civs right next to each other. Also, I'd want to weave in a lot more into that and use that effort to start into the adopt a civ mechanism, much of which is exactly what people are suggesting here whether they realize it or not. And unfortunately, I would deem that effort too distracting to other modding goals at the moment.

 

[climat]

As such Egyptian culture was given Desert and Flood Plains as their terrain requirements. This stops having say Polar Egyptians. Likewise the Inuits require Ice terrain so not to have Desert Inuits.

Perfect_Mongoose mapscript places Desert and Flood Plains tiles next to Tundra, though. So, technically, you may be able to have Polar Egyptians and Desert Inuits if you use it.

 

[civfan613]

Or even simpler:
Have ONE generic civ-type: "human".
THEN, enable all those "European/American/etc" culture-resources the same way it goes now for the nation-resources, but with a much bigger number of varied requirements (so you won't build African culture in Tundra; the requirements could even be NEGATIVE: "no Tundra/Ice in the city vicinity"), including specific buildings and maybe even units (or civics), not just resources and city-surroundings.
THEN, like it is now, but with a MUCH more branched-out system: e.g. European=>Latin=>Roman=>Italian.
This will lead to MORE culture-choices, but LESS culture-numbers-present.
Well, probably - cause you'd need to meet a lot more requirements to get the final-step cultures.
So?

Oh, and for the GEM scenario:
Simply force-name any number of civs that have fixed locations and give them that exact mega-culture.
You can easily name them based on geography:
EastEast-European civ; NorthWest-Asian civ; SouthSouth-American civ; etc etc etc.
(YES, with at least TWO directional definers, where applicable - no need for TWO in Australia obviously.)
Oh, and you can make some LIMITING mechanism that would REMOVE the "EXTRA" civs - look at how it's done in Civ2:
You have a SET of civs with the same color, so only ONE of each set's civs can be present at any time.
Which again brings us to the mega-culture-civs being those exact sets.
It's up to you to decide the size of each set - could be one per continent or maybe two-three for the bigger ones.
Like:
Australia - ONE set, always.
Africa - ONE to FOUR sets, TWO being optimal ([N, S]; optional: [NW, NE, C, S]).
Europe - ONE to FIVE sets, TWO being optimal ([N, S] or [W, E]; optional: [N, S, C, W, E]).
Asia - ONE to FIVE sets, FOUR being optimal ([CN, CS, W, E]; optional: [N, CN, CS, W, E]).
Americas - TWO to FIVE sets, THREE being optimal ([N, C, S]; optional: [NW, NE, C, SW, SE]).
Total - SIX to TWENTY sets, TWELVE being optimal.
Reduces graphical problems for PCs a lot, yet still provides a very varied gameplay.

I hope you get my above idea.
It means you WON'T be having Romans AND Greeks as TWO civs (they obviously belong to the SAME SET) - but you CAN (probably) have both CULTURES in your (South?)EUROPEAN-set civ.

And the last word:
I do think it's better to FIRST focus on making the GEM-compatible civs/sets/whatever - and only THEN play-test them on random maps.
But it's up to you, of course.

 

[MagnusIlluminus]

Actually, I had a thought to minimize color confusion issues. Instead of everyone from the same region being of a similar color (American being shades of Red, etc), each Region should have a rainbow of colors, and none (or at least a minimal number) that can be confused for another. This might be harder to accomplish in some regions, but it would eliminate having three near-red neighbors and trying to remember which is which just by color.

As far as it matters for game play, the Developing Leaders traits and the normal traits are both leader and culture traits at the moment, as there is not currently a system specifically for culture traits that can be used simultaneously with Developing Leaders or the normal system. Also, by the time that the "USA" culture is available to be built, the Civ should have long since have been known as another culture name anyway. Naming them after traits & region would only be for the beginning and very early part of the game. Still, it seems like most people don't like the idea, so I'll drop it.

 

[Hydromancerx]

Perfect_Mongoose mapscript places Desert and Flood Plains tiles next to Tundra, though. So, technically, you may be able to have Polar Egyptians and Desert Inuits if you use it.

I think the script is trying to simulate alpine terrain by having peaks surrounding permafrost and the desert in the rain shadow of the peaks.

(so you won't build African culture in Tundra;

While Africa doesn't go so far South to have a proper Tundra like in North America and Eurasia Africa still has cold climates. For instance in South Africa it can snow and in the high Rwenzori Mountains there have been tribal peoples such as the Konjo. In fact I might just added some of their cultures so Africa has some non-tropical cultures to get.

 

[civfan613]

Hydro
What about my ENTIRE post?
Would you please tell me your (and others') opinion on my ideas.

 

[Hydromancerx]

Hydro
What about my ENTIRE post?
Would you please tell me your (and others') opinion on my ideas.

Overall I think this is much too linear. Your basically forcing someone on the track to become a preset line of civs. As it is now one can become any combination of civs and the only real restrictions are resources, terrain and regional culture. However additional regional cultures can be obtained through assimilation settings and of course more resources and terrain can be obtained by expanding your empire.

As for GEM scenarios I have no idea how that would work.

 

[MagnusIlluminus]

It seems to me that civfan613's idea could work very well as a GEM-alternate scenario, as on an Earth map the cultures in a specific area should develop along specific lines. However, that said, I don't think that these development lines should be used outside of Earth maps for the specific reason that they are not Earth based geographically and thus cultures would develop differently.

Just had a wild thought. This concept requires Developing Leaders (or a similar system) to be in use. Could we do away with Culture Wonders entirely and have the player's Civ develop the culture(s) that have the same trait-set as the player chooses? Possibly still use the wonders but have an additional requirement for building one that you have to have the same traits as one (or more) of the Leader(s) for that Civ have. This would mean that nobody could build a Culture before they chose their first Negative (assuming Negatives were not disabled), which means that a very few cultures would get pushed back a bit. This would require a little more planning on a player's part to unlock specific Cultures as they would have to select particular traits, possibly ones that they would not normally choose.

 

[Hydromancerx]

So I have been thinking over all this. While it would be nice to have generic civ I think the work put in to the pay off is just not worth it at this point. Things are not broken when it comes to civs and all this would do it fix a minor problem of people asking "Why don't I have English culture if I picked English civ?" They still might ask that if they pick an English leader.

So for now I am going to let this topic sink down into the forum. There are many other things I could be focusing on that are more pressing than this. This is not a bad idea, just not a high priority idea.

 

[strategyonly]

So I have been thinking over all this. While it would be nice to have generic civ I think the work put in to the pay off is just not worth it at this point. Things are not broken when it comes to civs and all this would do it fix a minor problem of people asking "Why don't I have English culture if I picked English civ?" They still might ask that if they pick an English leader.

So for now I am going to let this topic sink down into the forum. There are many other things I could be focusing on that are more pressing than this. This is not a bad idea, just not a high priority idea.

Unless a non-C2C modder wants to do the work??

 

[civfan613]

OK, thanks for the answer.
Well, ONE DAY...