Trigan Emperor
Prince
- Joined
- Apr 11, 2015
- Messages
- 438
As a concept, the Terra randomised map sounds like a lot of fun: all the playing civilizations start on a single "Old World" continent and out there across the ocean is a "New World" continent inhabited only by barbarians (and city-states, if selected).
In reality, the gameplay doesn't work so well.
I had a game with nine civs. The "Old World" got fully settled, with no room for any further cities. Then ocean-going technology was discovered and I was hoping for a new phase of the game with civs competing to colonise the new continent.
Instead, the other civs didn't take much interest in founding colonies. It was the late 19th century before any of the eight AI civs decided to found a city there, by which time I'd had settlements there for hundreds of years. Then Germany founded a whole bunch of cities and another power founded two. Much too late in the game for them to have much of an effect on the game.
So in the end, the New World was fairly inconsequential to the game.
This issue has been mentioned before in the forum and some years ago there were suggestions of a mod, which doesn't appear to have reached fruition.
So, some questions:
- Why in the game mechanics do the other civs not settle in the New World earlier, despite it being the only land free to settle on the map? If distance wasn't an issue, and the unoccupied land was right next to the civs I'm sure they would have settled it earlier. So what in the game mechanics was making distance an issue?
- Why in the game mechanics do the civs (well two of them) decide in the late 19th century that settling the New World is a good idea? The Germans went a bit crazy over it - maybe they have a high expansionist setting?
- Are there any settings that can be tweaked for a mod, like an expansionism trait? Is there a distance modifier that can be altered? For example, later in the game the distance factor suddenly didn't seem to be an issue for the AI civs and they started settling cities.
Other possibilities for such a mod:
- increased aggression from AI civs towards city-states
- increased gold from city-state capture
- make some resources only available in the New World, e.g. cocoa, sugar, pepper, cotton
A quick note: the Terra map is bigger than the usual maps so, if using it, I recommend playing it at one size smaller than the map size you usually use.
Also, anyone played Imperialism II: Age of Exploration (1999)? It's a fun game with a randomized New World (and Old World, if you wish) with colonization as the aim of the game and unique New World resources. I never played Civilization IV: Colonization (2008) but it sounds pretty similar.
In reality, the gameplay doesn't work so well.
I had a game with nine civs. The "Old World" got fully settled, with no room for any further cities. Then ocean-going technology was discovered and I was hoping for a new phase of the game with civs competing to colonise the new continent.
Instead, the other civs didn't take much interest in founding colonies. It was the late 19th century before any of the eight AI civs decided to found a city there, by which time I'd had settlements there for hundreds of years. Then Germany founded a whole bunch of cities and another power founded two. Much too late in the game for them to have much of an effect on the game.
So in the end, the New World was fairly inconsequential to the game.
This issue has been mentioned before in the forum and some years ago there were suggestions of a mod, which doesn't appear to have reached fruition.
So, some questions:
- Why in the game mechanics do the other civs not settle in the New World earlier, despite it being the only land free to settle on the map? If distance wasn't an issue, and the unoccupied land was right next to the civs I'm sure they would have settled it earlier. So what in the game mechanics was making distance an issue?
- Why in the game mechanics do the civs (well two of them) decide in the late 19th century that settling the New World is a good idea? The Germans went a bit crazy over it - maybe they have a high expansionist setting?
- Are there any settings that can be tweaked for a mod, like an expansionism trait? Is there a distance modifier that can be altered? For example, later in the game the distance factor suddenly didn't seem to be an issue for the AI civs and they started settling cities.
Other possibilities for such a mod:
- increased aggression from AI civs towards city-states
- increased gold from city-state capture
- make some resources only available in the New World, e.g. cocoa, sugar, pepper, cotton
A quick note: the Terra map is bigger than the usual maps so, if using it, I recommend playing it at one size smaller than the map size you usually use.
Also, anyone played Imperialism II: Age of Exploration (1999)? It's a fun game with a randomized New World (and Old World, if you wish) with colonization as the aim of the game and unique New World resources. I never played Civilization IV: Colonization (2008) but it sounds pretty similar.
