Help me design a mod to allow civilizations to persist through the ages

[Mustakrakish]

Help me design a mod to allow civilizations to persist through the ages. To get back that classic feeling of leading Ancient Egypt all the way into space, and do it as seemlessly as possible within the framework of the game’s systems. Embrace the new systems (to a degree), not scrap it.

I appreciate immersion very highly in civ and I’m weird about it. Generally immersion in games is weird and so very different for different people. I try not to let “immersion” get fully in the way of “fun mechanics”, but there are limits to how much my brain can take before it stops being fun, despite all the “fun mechanics”. It’s a balancing act. Somehow immortal leaders never bothered me, but Maya morphing into Ming does. Anyway, it’s not about whether I should (I will), but HOW. Ideally I’d love to create a mod that others would find interesting to try, so it’s not “my way or the highway” here. All ideas are welcome. I can always have that “my way” version as private alternative version if need be.

Some background, I’m a software dev, but not a game dev. Meaning I have zero experience actually creating mods for games, but have confidence I can figure it out. And as it happens to be, I’m not in a hurry. Who knows, maybe Firaxis will make this happen to a degree quicker all by themselves after a while, rendering this moot. Or more likely another modder is already hard at work to create something awesome. Basically I’m saying there’s a 50% chance this mod will materialize, it might, or it might not Not a guerantee. I will seriously try, that’s for sure. I’d love ideas from all, and wisdom from modding veterans on what can and cannot be done. I believe a satisfactory solution CAN be achieved without a single new asset, which is key, but will require lots of numbers balancing.

Here’s an initial plan, in phases, from most fundamental (as I see it) to nice to haves. I have 90% confidence in part 1 and I really doubt it somehow being technically impossible or too challenging. Parts 2 and 3 though, no idea at this point. Ideas are very much uncooked to even think on a technical level.

Part 1

We create previous era equivalent civs in the next eras that don’t have unique buildings or units, but get massive bonuses on “tradition”, (unique infrastructure & policies) to counter balance this. Meaning unique districts will get even stronger and be even more important to set up. Further unique social policies would iterate on old tree with those same bonuses (where makes sense) buffed up further. Ideally this will encourage to get as much as possible of those uniques up and running in previous age to allow our civilization to “stand the test of time” better by having strong traditional foundation or whatnot.

I think those bonuses should reflect a kind of “old and rooted” vs “new and exciting” when comparing bonuses vs evolving into another civ.

We create those “new” civs by copy pasting culturally the closest ones (meaning closest ones asset wise) in the next era. Some examples:

• Egypt → Exploration: Egypt with Abbasid assets → Modern: ?
• Persia → Exploration: Persia with Abbasid assets → Modern: ?
• Rome → Exploration: Rome with Spanish assets → Modern: Rome with French/British/Prussian assets?
• Spain → Modern: Spain with French/British/Prussian assets
• Mongolia → Modern: Mongolia with Qing assets
• Etc.

Unfortunately the roster is pretty weak (not enough variety) on launch for the system they baked in. Whether it’s due to them trying to sell us as much dlc and as soon as possible, or genuinely due to lack of resources to implement in time, that I leave for others to debate. But the fact is with time dlc civs will improve the situation.

It might be apparent at this point that this doesn’t really work in reverse. Meaning our progression is time linear, with America for example only existing in modern age. This is intentional, as this part I don’t mind. I don’t mind (not one bit) older civilizations getting more spotlight so to speak. I don’t mind modern ones appearing in modern age, I do mind tremendously not being able to take the ancient ones to modern era.

That said, I’m willing to bend on this if good solutions on how to handle this come forth. So definitely keeping an open mind.

Part 2

I woudn’t aim to remove the civ switching, but make it more “evolving” and less “switching”. Introduce scricter rules to it to make it less jarring. For example America is very much a special case IMO and could be highly available, for example:

• European civs that established towns/cities on new continent in exploration era to keep it more “historic” adjacent let’s just say

OR

• Any civ that established towns/cities on new continent in exploration era

Basically guaranteeing America popping up in modern age one way or an other.

Perhaps limit / remove impact of leaders. Maya becoming Ming is still incredibly jarring to me, even if led by Confucius. This is a hard topic I’m kind of stuck with and need fresh views and ideas on.

Spoiler Related rant, just ignore :

A bit of a rant: On one hand I appreciate the somewhat endless combinations and potential replayability that mixing leaders and civs can bring but oh man did it broke my brain… I can’t see civs on the map. I see Catherine, I see Harriet. Half the time I have no idea what civ are they supposed to be. Everything blends into the background. When I see Harriet, I think "America" — until I realize near the end of an era that she's actually leading Egypt. Not that it mattered in the end. When I spot Machiavelli, I have to pause and think "Wait, which civilization is he leading? Florence or Italy not in the game to my knowledge. Rome I guess?" But no, it's Greece. I never quite agreed with the focus being too much on leaders, rather than civilizations (Civ2 had it right), but this one cranks it up to 11. Civs just change in the background like outfits for AI leaders. I quickly noticed being fatiqued trying to keep track, a mental connection of leaders and their current civs, and stopped caring about their current outfit altogether. Leaders are now front and center with civilizations fading into background.

It's confusing and frustrating, but more importantly hard to think of a solution that embraces the mechanic, while trying to make some more sense into it

More strict “evolving” rules and removing leader impact I think may somewhat improve the situation. You can still mix and match, but it won’t be all over the place as much.

Part 3

We still want exploration and modern era civs to appear on the map as well, not just by our own choices. So we can’t force AI to always choose the same civ, effectively locking every game into ancient civs only party. Several ideas thrown at the wall at this point:

• We can tie it to how much unique infrastructure was setup / unique social policies researched: the less, the more likely they are to “evolve” due to “weak” foundation (tradition). That would also make sense, since they’d have less benefits remaining as they were
• Doing horrible (bottom tier era points) leads to civ “not surviving”, but instead of being removed from the map like in ARA game, they evolve. In this case leader changes AS WELL though. New player on the stage and all, with all relationships reset. Naturally the leader change part only applies to AI players

 

[RedCourtJester]

I feel like you should wait until more DLC is released, that way you have a broader range of assets to mix and match to make these "persistent" civs.

Like we have pretty good information indicating that, among other things, we are getting Carthage (good "Spain" antiquity assets), and Qajar (good "Persia" modern assets). I feel like Mongolia could already do okay with a mixture of Russian and Qing assets, although I think it really wants for a better antiquity option with Scythia or Xiongnu. And when I think the odds are pretty good for a modern Mamluk or Italy civ, why would you make an approximation for Egypt or Rome when better options will likely present themselves soon?

Just a thought. Not every modding problem needs to be solved day one.

 

[Mustakrakish]

I feel like you should wait until more DLC is released, that way you have a broader range of assets to mix and match to make these "persistent" civs.

Like we have pretty good information indicating that, among other things, we are getting Carthage (good "Spain" antiquity assets), and Qajar (good "Persia" modern assets). I feel like Mongolia could already do okay with a mixture of Russian and Qing assets, although I think it really wants for a better antiquity option with Scythia or Xiongnu. And when I think the odds are pretty good for a modern Mamluk or Italy civ, why would you make an approximation for Egypt or Rome when better options will likely present themselves soon?

Just a thought. Not every modding problem needs to be solved day one.

You are correct in that we need more content for sure. But those assets can be swapped as they come anyway. I feel asset diversity for that part is the easiest no-brainer part of this whole mod. I'm more concerned with planning other parts of this before diving into it. I don't think waiting on content DLC will help with that.

 

[Ricco02]

As far as I see now. The Age transitions are pretty hardcoded and not really changeable without mod tools. And I doubt they will allow us to change these aspects with mod tools.

Maybe a more experienced modder knows how to do this. But I have attempted this and gave up. The only possible way I know to get around the age transitions is to make a mod where everything of the antiquity and the exploration age is available in the modern age. So that you start the game in modern age but actually start with the stuff from the antiquity age.

Since the modern age does not have any age transitions ahead there won’t be any age transition.

However, you need to extensively edit all the trees like the tech tree etc.

 

[Mustakrakish]

As far as I see now. The Age transitions are pretty hardcoded and not really changeable without mod tools. And I doubt they will allow us to change these aspects with mod tools.

Maybe a more experienced modder knows how to do this. But I have attempted this and gave up. The only possible way I know to get around the age transitions is to make a mod where everything of the antiquity and the exploration age is available in the modern age. So that you start the game in modern age but actually start with the stuff from the antiquity age.

Since the modern age does not have any age transitions ahead there won’t be any age transition.

However, you need to extensively edit all the trees like the tech tree etc.

Hmm, are you sure we're talking about the same thing though? Maybe I misunderstood you (or modding in general), but my vision is NOT to change/nuke transition per se. Let's think outside the box here. You'll still be selecting "another civ", transition will happen. That new civ just happens to be "Exploration Egypt", "Modern Egypt", etc (the name wouldn't literally have "Exploration" prefix, but you get the idea). And on the plus side we don't even need to think about leaders in this case. So no new models / animations etc needed. Essentially we'll simply be adding new civs, and with my very limited modding knowledge, adding new content, like civs is trivial (unless reusing existing assets is somehow locked). Making AI then select those seems like it would be mostly AI preferences - make Ancient X prefer Exploration X instead of Y, lower preference for Y to second place. Though if those are not exposed to be modified via some API (I guess ini files in modding world?), I can see how this can be hard or even impossible. But I'd be super surprised if such a thing as changing AI preference of a civ isn't in any way modifiable. That seems like a very odd thing NOT to allow.

It's fundamentally changing the mechanics that is the uphill battle, and that is specifically what I want to avoid. Work with the system, not against it. The hard parts, as I see it, is the 2nd and especially 3rd part. Those require new rules, new logic and this is where my "good semi-educated guesses" hit the wall.

I tried to organize in order of how hard I perceive it to be doable with every "tier" before being playable. So if we hit the wall with part 3, we still have a decent modification with 1 and 2.