How would you design a "2X" mod?

[WildWeazel]

A comment in a gamedev interview a while back, about how a lot of people (myself included) prefer the "first X and a half" of early-game exploration and expansion phases, sparked some discussion on Discord. It got me thinking about how you could balance the game to conclude after those phases but still feel complete. Simply ending the game as-is at say 1 AD probably wouldn't be very satisfying: score would be the only viable victory condition, and that would usually come down to the fastest land-grab (cough Maya). So how would you design and balance a "2X" mod to feature exploration and expansion, wrap up around the time the map gets filled up, and still present interesting strategies and achievable victory conditions?

Some assorted thoughts:

• Limit the tech tree to roughly the first era or equivalent, maybe split into Ancient and Classical, with some features moved earlier to help round out gameplay
• Balanced around quick expansion, and end fairly early for score (Victory Points?) or wonder victory
• Faster workers/jobs for better growth, and again faster expansion
• Significant location bonuses like globally unique resources, wonders requiring resources in city radius, and VP locations (though if those only appear on starting locations for random maps, that's a strong incentive to rush capitals)
• Maybe an overall less fertile map with lots of food in certain spots to make them very valuable city locations
• City placement and map exploration should be the most important decisions
• You should be able to cross the seas and make contact with other continents before the game ends
• An alternative to the UN would provide another viable path to victory, but is it too easy to cheese?
• An alternative to the spaceship could also work, if the parts are relatively cheap but each require different resources as in Anno Domini
• Buff barbarian units to compensate for lack of conquest and make exploration more tactical
• City elimination could be an interesting option to make military play more relevant and counter rapid over-extension
• Mass regicide and/or upgradeable kings (as in Sengoku) would also add some military flavor
• With C3X, maybe VP locations could be randomly distributed or spawned from goody huts, and/or goody huts otherwise buffed

 

[Nathiri]

Ive always preferred ancient era mods. Anno Domini one of them. All good thoughts. I have played with high food resources and lower tile yields. My intention at the time was to make cities with high population more desirable and to have big cities as there were ancient metropolises in the past. I also wanted to utilize specialists more. The high food resources would make it possible to get the lower yield tiles but also support more citizens than normal civ3. Corruption was increased, but was to have a lot of buildings and a specialist designed to reduce it. I wanted heavier city investment than just building a few strategic buildings. To make it seem like you were actually building a city rather than a glorified military outpost. Any of the existing victory conditions edited for the era would work just fine in the ancient era. But a victory option ive always wanted was one more centered on commerce rather than high science into production (ie. Space Race).