Akbarthegreat
Angel of Junil
So I've been thinking about this a while, I wanted to see if there was some support for this idea on here.
I propose introducing a new stability category of tiles between historical and foreign, "safe" tiles. Historical tiles are those which the civ held for reasonably long periods of time; safe tiles are those which the civ held for only a brief period , or which it didn't hold at all but seeing the civ expand there would make sense to some extent. Yes, this is a very subjective distinction, and maybe someone could think of some more objective criteria for this.
An example: in my current game as Italy, I had to raze Belgrade and Athens since they were both on foreign tiles (both incidentally just one tile away from historical territory). My main bone of contention with the current system is that a city like Athens or Belgrade would have penalized me just as much as Mecca or Tokyo or New Orleans, despite the latter examples being clearly far more ahistorical.
For most cases tiles won't transition directly from historical to foreign anymore: there will be some safe tiles as a gradient or buffer of sorts.
This will be good for gameplay for a few reasons:
IMO the last point is the most important. Currently lets say I'm playing as Japan. I have no reason to bother conquering China when so many good city spots in the Americas provide a far better alternative. But if you bring safe tiles into the picture, then (roughly) every 3 cities in China will give me the same hit as a random city in the US. Then I'm far more likely to conquer China and make a more historical empire.
I propose introducing a new stability category of tiles between historical and foreign, "safe" tiles. Historical tiles are those which the civ held for reasonably long periods of time; safe tiles are those which the civ held for only a brief period , or which it didn't hold at all but seeing the civ expand there would make sense to some extent. Yes, this is a very subjective distinction, and maybe someone could think of some more objective criteria for this.
An example: in my current game as Italy, I had to raze Belgrade and Athens since they were both on foreign tiles (both incidentally just one tile away from historical territory). My main bone of contention with the current system is that a city like Athens or Belgrade would have penalized me just as much as Mecca or Tokyo or New Orleans, despite the latter examples being clearly far more ahistorical.
For most cases tiles won't transition directly from historical to foreign anymore: there will be some safe tiles as a gradient or buffer of sorts.
This will be good for gameplay for a few reasons:
- The AI has a tendency to expand to such tiles anyway. (Examples: Holy Rome getting France, Poland or Constantinople. Japan grabbing a Chinese city. China getting silk road cities. Mongolia getting Baghdad. Moors getting Tripoli. etc etc.) This would reduce the expansion stability penalties the AI faces and hence reduce the current problem of unstable AIs.
- Since the AI would now prefer safe tiles over foreign tiles, empires will be more historical since the AI will have more options to consider before attacking ahistorical areas. Examples: Japan conquering China. France settling Louisiana or the Indian coast. Russia trying to attack Poland. etc.
- The human player won't have to raze and resettle cities falling just out of historical territory for want of stability. Examples: Italy and Belgrade mentioned above. Japan and San Francisco. The Vikings and Aberdeen. etc.
- The human player is disincentivized from founding wildly ahistorical cities. Clear examples of this trend are founding cities such as Denver, Chicago, San Francisco, Durban with any civ (China, Arabia, Vikings). Since safe tiles provide additional area for settlement, the stability hit from settling very ahistorically can be increased.
IMO the last point is the most important. Currently lets say I'm playing as Japan. I have no reason to bother conquering China when so many good city spots in the Americas provide a far better alternative. But if you bring safe tiles into the picture, then (roughly) every 3 cities in China will give me the same hit as a random city in the US. Then I'm far more likely to conquer China and make a more historical empire.
