DarkPhoton
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2021
- Messages
- 9
I would like it to be a bit more realistic and also have a better combat system. It also needs to be balanced for both tall and wide play. Some ideas are:
Simultaneous play. Turns are split into 2 phases: the main one where everything but combat happens, the 2nd one for combat. Units can’t move during the combat phase (they attack neighboring units for melee or units in their range) and all the combats are planned before happening all at the same time. If a unit attacks a unit that is attacking another unit, it gets flanking bonus.
Simultaneous play allows for better multiplayer and better AI since the AI can plan at the same time as the player. The AI needs to be stronger. Use machine learning. On high difficulty, the AI evaluates more positions and takes more time. For higher difficulty, handicaps might still be needed, but it should be bonuses that increase through time (like in smoother difficulty mod, but it should be the default) rather than more initial settlers. Bonuses through time are much better to make the game interesting during the whole duration.
Larger maps should be available by default (without needing a mod). We should have access to at least maps that are 4 times bigger in both directions. Modern computers won’t have any issues running that and it will allow having Earth maps that make sense.
Harder eureka and inspiration. None of them should be obtained by default like “meeting another civilization” or “getting a government with 8 slots” or randomly like “finding a new continent”.
Diplomatic victory is modified. One needs to do many accomplishments to get it, which requires to have advanced technology and do projects that help every civilization.
- Fix climate change.
- Eliminate poverty, hunger, illiteracy, epidemics.
True alliance: allies win the game together. There can be one ally for each victory type except religion.
Improved diplomacy: declaration of wars and peace deals can be done with multiple players at the same time (a war score can help divide the gains). Grievance and reputation should be separated. You lose reputation if you break a deal, but gain grievance if you hurt another civ. You should not lose reputation for winning cities after being declared war upon or for declaring war with a casus belli and following its requirement. There should be vassals. Also, everybody should start at “no diplomatic relation” until you sign the first peace treaty with them (which requires writing) and you don’t get any reputation loss for attacking someone you have “no diplomatic relation” with. It should also be possible to attack and pillage without declaring war (just lose reputation and gain grievance) as it has been pretty standard for all history and is still common now. Open borders for military units should be limited to a specific number of units and a fixed duration. People don’t allow free for all open borders. On the other hand, civilians and religious units should have open border by default (Close border to civilian should be a diplomatic action that acquire grievance and that one doesn’t have at the beginning). Also, not respecting open borders should be allowed, it just causes grievance and loss of reputation (if a peace treaty has been signed).
Rather than having UN meetings (which should not happen before the atomic era realistically), everybody should be allowed to propose joint actions at any time as soon as they have discovered another civilization and have discovered “writing”. Joint actions should be realistic and anybody with diplomatic relations with the player proposing the action can choose to join it, fight it, or refuse to participate. They can be: conquer a civilization, defend a civilization, defend a city-state, embargo a civilization (refuse trade and pillage its trade routes), fight a heresy, promote a religion, etc. Actively participating in a joint action should improve reputation, while joining and doing nothing should reduce your reputation.
City-states should give their culture and science to the civilizations divided in proportion to the influence, in addition to a suzerain bonus rather than giving bonuses to buildings (which is too good for wide play and is not realistic). You should get influence on a city for doing something that impacts them rather than random quests. So things like trade route, religious spread, gift of gold, envoy units, spy, gift of units, gift of great work, military protection.
Amenities and housing are unified. Luxury resources are used only for money, they don’t generate amenities. (Luxury resources are mostly used by a small minority so they don’t matter in the life of the majority). What counts for example are access to water, housing districts, no hunger, security, and having yields comparable or higher to the average civilization in money, science and culture.
No buildings and most improvements are replaced by districts that are repeatable in a single city. All wonders are built on a district. Districts can be built on top of another which destroys the previous one or on top of a resource (by default, so without needing a mod). Examples of districts are:
- City center: generate amenities based on water access, terrain, and appeal. Example of wonder: Eiffel tower.
- Town: generate amenities based on water access, terrain, and appeal.
- Farm: generate food. Maybe 3 per slot and multiple slots, can be improved to more.
- Fishermen’s wharf: generate food. Maybe 3 per slot and multiple slots, can be improved to more.
- Pasture: generate food and production. Maybe 2 food, 1 prod.
- Stable: generate horse, camel.
- Elephant camp: generate elephant.
- Mine: generate strategy or luxury resource. Built on ore or gems deposits. They have a limited amount of resources before exhaustion. New deposits can be found with new technology.
- Quarry: generate production. Built on hills (for stone) or flood plain (for clay). Maybe 3 per slot and multiple slots, can be improved to more.
- Lumber mill (on a forest, near a river): generate production. Maybe 3 per slot and multiple slots, can be improved to more.
- Lumber camp (on a forest, near a Lumber mill): generate production. Cheaper than the mill itself.
- Charcoal pit (on a forest, near a river): Generate charcoal.
- Plantation: generate strategy or luxury resource.
- Holy site: generate faith and some other yield. Each holy site is of a different type. Mountain god holy site generates faith from mountains, river goddess generates faith and food from rivers, etc. It replaces pantheons. Example of wonder: Statue of Zeus, Temple of Artemis.
- Burial site: generate loyalty. Example of wonder: Stonehenge, Pyramid, Mausoleum, Terracotta Army, Taj Mahal.
- Garden: generate amenities. Example of wonder: Hanging gardens.
- Market: generate money from trade routes. Example of wonder: Petra.
- Trading port: generate money from trade routes. Examples of wonder: Colossus, Great Lighthouse, Statue of Liberty.
- Military port: generate XP, can defend and attack. Example of wonder: Venetian Arsenal.
- Encampment: generate XP, can defend and attack.
- Military academy: generate more XP.
- Place of worship: generate faith from the population in an area, doesn’t stack. Needs a religion. Example of wonder: Hagia Sophia.
- Craftsmanship district: generate money from the population in an area, doesn’t stack.
- Scholarship district: generate culture and science from the population in an area, doesn’t stack. Example of wonder: Great library.
- Museum district: generate culture and tourism. Example of wonder: Louvre, Hermitage.
- Theatre district: generate culture and amenities from the population in an area, doesn’t stack.
- Amphitheater district: generate amenities and money from the population in an area, doesn’t stack. Example of wonder: Colosseum.
- Stadium district: generate amenities and tourism from the population in an area, doesn’t stack. Example of wonder: Maracana.
- University: generate science and production from the population in an area, doesn’t stack. Example of wonder: Oxford
- Financial district: generate money from the population in an area, doesn’t stack. Example of wonder: Big Ben.
- Industrial zone: generate gold and production from the population in an area, doesn’t stack. Example of wonder: Ruhr Valley
- Biology Research lab: generate science from unimproved land in an area.
- Observatory: generate science from adjacent mountain tiles.
- Technology district: generate science and money from the population in an area, doesn’t stack.
- Government plaza: boost loyalty in the range around it, give other bonuses based on government and legacy bonuses based on earlier tier last governments. Capital city center gets by default the same bonuses and loyalty boost as a government plaza. They should have a maintenance cost that increases with more complex governments.
- Etc.
There should be projects to improve districts and give them more citizen slots. That will improve tall play. Also, citizen slots need to be good like in civ 4 and 5, not useless like in civ 6.
It should be possible to acquire debt once financial districts have been built. With the debt limit set proportionally to the yield of all the financial districts. The interest rate could be at around 5%. Public debt has been a very common feature in history especially in times of war.
To get a Wonder, one must first get wonder points for the specific kind of wonder by building district projects. Then they claim the wonder, and they are the only one who can build it. Unused wonder points remain useful as they are multiple wonders in the same categories. Categories of wonder could be:
- Burial
- Spiritual
- Artistic
- Scientific
- Commercial
- Industrial
- Military
Additional great people type:
- Great navigator. For example Zheng He, Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, Ferdinand Magellan, James Cook. Gives bonuses to trade, colonization of new continents, and exploration. Points from trading port and trade route, while great admiral gets point from military ports and naval combat.
- Great theologian. Gives bonuses to faith and religion. Available after getting a great prophet or when all the great prophets have been given.
- Great diplomat. Improve influence on a city-state. Improve relation with another civ.
Some great people should be changed:
- Great scientist’s Eureka should be only theirs. Euclid should be the only way to get Eureka for mathematics and Alan Turing the only way to get Eureka for computer for example.
- Some Great writers should provide Inspiration rather than great works.
- Some Great musicians should do concerts to gain tourism (replace rock bands) rather than great works. (Especially the later ones for which there is not enough turns for the Great Work to be useful)
- Some Great artists should provide raw culture rather than great works.
Cities' usable tile range is not limited to 3 but depends on technology, movement cost, and resources. Tiles that are easier to reach thanks to river or coastal travel can be farther than 3 tiles even in the ancient era, while one won’t be able to use tiles hidden by mountains and the range will be more limited when it’s hilly. Technology and consumption of horses or oil increase the range. To make things clearer, water tiles should have a 1/3 movement cost rather than units having their movement increased when going in the water (horse-based units should have their movement lowered to the one of a unit without a horse though). Cities should acquire the closest tiles in movement cost first rather than absolute range. So their land will grow along rivers, coast, and roads first rather than being circular. It makes much more sense historically than a city will use lands connected to it by rivers, sea, or roads.
It should be possible to annex another city to a city if they are close enough. Then the city center of the annexed city becomes a town.
Growth should be based on a percentage growth that depends on health. Hunger reduces health, but having a food surplus does not create people. Food surplus is automatically sent to nearby cities with a penalty due to distance (maybe -10% per movement cost first, but is reduced by technology such as refrigeration, and usage of horses or oil). There is also growth from immigration from cities with low amenities to cities with higher amenities.
Engineers can build aqueducts, sewers, canals, roads, and walls on the boundary of the tiles. They can also build forts and some other military improvements on the tiles, which generate defense and XP for military units. And they can transport production by being built in a city and expanded in another city center. They should also be able to build siege weapons. They can be created with a variable amount of production and they disappear when the production is used up. Aqueducts, sewers, canals, walls, forts, etc. need a specific amount of production rather than being built. They cost money per turn.
More terrains, based on real climate. One needs to have discovered a staple plant adapted to this climate to create a farm, or an animal adapted to this climate for a pasture, or a luxury plant adapted to this climate for a plantation.
- Tropical rainforest (af): Reduce growth and units health. Natural disaster: mosquito-borne disease outbreak. Always forest. Can have wetland, hills, and flood plains.
- Tropical monsoon (am): Reduce growth and units health. Natural disaster: mosquito-borne disease outbreak, tropical storm. Can have forest, wetland, hills, and flood plains.
- Tropical savanna (aw/as): Natural disaster: drought, tropical storm. Can have wetland, hills, and flood plains.
- Desert (bw): no yield unless flood plains, reduce growth and units health, cannot have farms or pasture. Natural disaster: sand storm. Can have hills, and flood plains.
- Steppe (bs): Cannot have farms. Natural disaster: drought. Can have hills, and flood plains.
- Oceanic (cf): Bonus growth. Natural disaster: subtropical storm. Can have forest, wetland, hills, and flood plains.
- Dry season temperate (cw/cs): Bonus growth. Natural disaster: subtropical storm, drought. Can have forest, wetland, hills, and flood plains.
- Hot Continental (dxa): Natural disaster: subtropical storm, snowstorm. Can have forest, wetland, hills, and flood plains.
- Warm Continence (dxb): Reduce growth. Natural disaster: subtropical storm, snowstorm. Can have forest, wetland, hills, and flood plains.
- Subarctic (dxc/dxd): Low yield, reduce growth and units health, cannot have farms or pasture. Natural disaster: snowstorm. Can have forest, wetland, hills, and flood plains.
- Tundra (et): No yield, reduce health, cannot have farms or pasture. Can have hills. (Tundra should be rare and only very North, only the extreme North of Canada and Russia are tundra, it’s not that common)
- Ice Cap (ef): No yield, reduce health, cannot build anything.
- Warm Mountain: No yield, reduce health, can only build a few select districts like Terrace farms. Natural disaster: landslide.
- Cold Mountain: No yield, reduce health, can only build a few select districts like ski resorts. Natural disaster: snowslide.
- Cold Volcano: No yield, reduce health, cannot build anything. Natural disaster: snowslide, volcanic eruption. Increase adjacent production and food yield.
- Warm Volcano: No yield, reduce health, cannot build anything. Natural disaster: landslide, volcanic eruption. Increase adjacent production and food yield.
Also, have additional features such as wetlands, hills, forests, and flood plains. All terrains have an altitude that is used for combat and aqueducts (go downstream from mountain, lake, or river) and sewers (go downstream to river or ocean). Hills and forests should reduce food and increase production. Wetland should just reduce food and health. Flood plains should increase food. The base yield should be something like 2 food + 1 prod for most terrains since it represents people hunting animals and gathering plants which produce mostly food but also some production from bones, skin, and hard parts of plants.
The variety in terrains matters because they’ll look different and that’s more realistic and they’ll grow different luxury, staple plants, and animals. Also, some will have different natural disasters and reduced yield or no yield at all.
Additional disasters: flood in flood plains and low coastal areas, earthquake in some areas, epidemics (start randomly and move through trade routes).
Disasters should not improve yields. Flood plains and tiles neighboring a volcano should have a bonus yield, but they should not keep improving at each flood or eruption.
Climate change should only increase sea-level rise, floods, droughts, storms. Not volcanoes, comets, earthquakes, etc.
Wildfires should have a chance to happen when there is a drought on a forest tile and can move to other forest tiles in the drought.
The units can be on the center of a tile or one of the 6 corners, and one must pass through one of the corners before getting to another tile (equivalent to zoom out by 2, but only for military and unit movement purposes). Rivers and canals (both on the boundary) can be used by ships. The cost of movement of the boundary of 2 tiles is the minimum between the 2 unless it’s a river or canal, then it’s the cost of a water tile.
Units can move all together in a formation. Only the movement cost of the center unit is considered (so the other follows while ignoring terrain unless it’s a mountain, then they move in the formation to fit, but still the same center unit determines the movement cost). It will make moving armies easier.
Military and civilian units cost strategic resources, people, and gold, and potentially production (mostly for complex units like tanks and planes, simple warriors do not cost any production), and then have a very high maintenance cost in money. The limit on the number of units is mostly based on money and on a military supply which is a percentage of the population depending on policies (one cannot transform all his people into soldiers even with a lot of gold). Production is mostly for districts. We can’t use wood and rocks to build soldiers. On the other hand, districts cannot be built with money. Soldiers can be sent back to a city after the war or kept for XP. They accumulate XP slowly when fortified in a military improvement or district.
There should be a patriotism yield that is equivalent to money but must be spent each turn (in maintenance or creating units for example). It should be the only way to pay maintenance before the currency is discovered. It should be generated depending on population, amenities, and policies.
Border growth should be caused by getting growth points on neighboring tiles. Those points should be caused by population growth, district, policies, and money, but not culture. It should be possible to buy the tiles of other civilizations, part of the money will go to the other civilization and part will disappear (go to the locals essentially). The other civilization will get grievance and will have the opportunity to buy back the land without grievance (though it will cost more than what it received since some money is lost). Wealthy civilizations can expand their territory that way. Some policies can make your land more expansive to other civilizations or make it impossible for them to buy your lands.
Spies can be created as soon as writing is discovered. They are limited by their gold cost rather than by a strict limit. They can move as units and can attack military units (by poisoning or disorganizing them) in addition to attacking districts.
Trade routes only exist to link luxury to cities, and luxury only exists for that. Luxuries generate money based on their amount and rarity in all the cities they can reach by trade route minus a transport fee. Routes can be created by a project. Each city has some projects each connecting it to a nearby city (maybe 6 projects, one for each of the closest cities, including foreign). So roads don’t have to be built with engineers if they connect cities. The main goal of connecting cities is to trade luxury. Cities can also be connected by water if a path by water tiles is known and they have the needed technology.
Strategic resources are traded in a world market where everybody can put a sell and buy price for some number of resources. Trade only happens when the selling price + transport fee is below the buy price (the cost will be the average between the 2).
More strategic resources:
- Copper and tin: separate resources so trade might be needed. Needed for Bronze Age units. Also for some Wonders.
- Elephant, camel: for military units using them.
- Charcoal: everything that needs iron also needs that. Can also be used with niter for gunpowder units. Can also be used for heating for amenities in cold climates.
- Lead for some units like slinger using lead ammunition or javelineers using javelin with lead weight.
- Natural gas: for electricity. Needs pipeline built by engineers. (Need a natural gas power plant)
Also, many strategic resources have other usages in addition to their current units:
- Horse: used to improve farms, can be used by land trade routes.
- Niter: used for all gunpowder units and to improve farms. Can be made from oil once the Haber-Bosch process is discovered. Should only be found in arid terrain and small islands (because of guano islands).
- Oil: used to improve farms, can be used by land trade routes. Some amount is used to generate amenities for heating and transport during the modern era.
- Coal: Used for all gunpowder units and for anything that requires steel. Can be used by land trade routes. Some amount is used to generate amenities for heating depending on the climate.
- Iron: Used for all units with iron armor and weapons, even when they are mounted (needs both some iron and some horses). Used for many districts and wonders. Used for tanks and many other modern units, districts, and wonders. Iron is used everywhere.
When oil or coal is used to move units, it should be a cost per movement, rather than 1 per turn no matter if it moves or not. Also, niter and coal for gunpowder should be used for each attack, same for bronze (copper+tin) or iron for ranged units.
When a battle is won. We should get some resources and some prisoners, which can be ransomed for goal or forced to work to get extra population. Some civilizations or policies can allow to execute them for faith or patriotism bonuses.
Units can need multiple resources.
- Bronze Age units: all need at least copper+tin. Can need horses too (for chariot). Ranged units need resources for each attack.
- Iron Age/Middle-Age units: all need iron+charcoal. Can need horses, camel or elephant too. Ranged units need resources for each attack.
- Renaissance units: all need niter+charcoal per attack and charcoal+iron to be built. Charcoal is used both for gunpowder and steel.
- Modern and contemporary units: need niter+charcoal unless it has the technology to make gunpowder without them. Need iron+charcoal or iron+coal if they have steel armor. Planes need aluminum. All mobile units need oil for movement.
Nuclear power plants should not release CO2 and they should be good to avoid global warming.
Nuclear fusion should be one of the future techs and allow to build nuclear fusion power plants.
Divide the ancient era into the Stone Age era, Bronze Age era, and Iron Age era.
A wide civics tree (could be called humanities rather than civics). For example, could start with 3 civics (agrarian, pastoral, and seafaring) rather than 1, then expand in width. It is not expected to complete them all. Contains special military units, special districts, wonders, in addition of policies and governments (They can also require some technologies).
Military units should be changed. For the land units, a better set of units would be:
- Slow, range 3: stone slinger (available from start), clay slinger, lead slinger, crossbowman, field cannon, field artillery, mobile missile launcher.
- Slow, range 2: stone archer (available from start), bronze archer, iron archer, composite stone archer, composite bronze archer, composite iron archer. (Composite archers are stronger but are weakened in wet climates.), rifleman, sniper.
- Slow, range 1: light stone javelineers (available from start), light bronze javelineers, light iron javelineers, arquebusiers, musketeers, infantry.
- Slow, melee: stone spearmen (available from start), bronze spearmen, iron spearmen (need iron).
- Fast, range 2: chariot, horse archer, camel archer, dragoon, helicopter.
- Fast, range 1: horse javelineers, camel javelineers, tank, modern tank.
- Fast, range 1 or melee: cuirassier (use pistol and lance or saber).
- Slow, range 1 or melee: war elephant (usually has an archer platform, but can also charge), line infantry (melee because of bayonet charge).
- Fast, melee: horsemen, men-at-arms [men-at-arms are the real term for the military role of a knight, it’s not an infantry unit though they could fight dismounted in some occasion like any cavalry, especially in siege], demi-lancer.
- Exploration specialists: scout, horse rider, reconnaissance vehicles, drones.
- Support healing: supply chariot, supply vehicles. Heal units on the same tile and nearby. Reduce damage from the terrain.
- Support speed: transport chariot, armored vehicles. Increase speed of slow units to the speed of fast units.
- Immobile Siege: catapult, trebuchet (made by engineers)
- Immobile garrison: ballista, machine gun, missile launcher (created by cities. Cities don’t have range attack when walls are created, they need that)
- Mobile siege: Bombard, Artillery, Rocket Artillery.
Cultural units (available through the civics tree, so not everybody will have access to them). They are some units that were common in a geographical area but not unique to a civilization.
- Slow, melee units that are stronger in front of them (increased even more when defending against cavalry) but weaker on their rear: phalanx, pikemen.
- Slow, range 1 or melee: heavy javelineers, heavy lead javelineers, pike, and shot.
- Fast, melee: knight (noble men-at-arms in Europe, will usually have better equipment since they are wealthier.)
- Slow, melee: halberdiers, great swordsmen, poleaxemen.
- Etc.
With my idea that units can be on the corners of tiles, a range of 1 is half a tile, a range of 2 a full tile (there can still be 2 units between your unit and the one you attack), and a range of 3 a tile and a half.
No GDR, they make no sense. We will never build giant bipedal weapons. We will big giant ships, huge planes, big tanks, and maybe someday huge spaceships, but never giant bipeds (it doesn’t make any sense to do so, it is strictly less good than a tank.)
Range units should have stronger damage when attacking from a smaller range (since missiles slow down when moving), but units with a smaller range should still be stronger at their range, so they are useful.
Important changes to be more historically correct are that chariot should be used for archers in combat and transport, but not for heavy cavalry. Also, spearmen should be the basic melee units. They were the most common and basic type of soldiers, not anti-cavalry units. Also, all gun units should be ranged units.
A lot more governments (one for most policy types and levels: tribal/ancient, classical/middle-age/renaissance [need writing, except for Inca], modern/contemporary [need printing], future [need artificial intelligence]) and more policy types. No wildcard policy (though there should be still wildcard slots for flexibility). The policy types could be:
- Militaristic (unit production, cost, XP, strength, etc.): Chiefdom, Empire, Fascism, Fully Automated Warfare State.
- Diplomatic (trade, diplomacy, and alliance): _, Confederation, Multi-National Union, World Union
- Rationalist (science): _, _, Technocracy, AI-government
- Spiritual (faith): God-King, Theocracy, Religious Republic, _
- Authoritarianism (production): _, Absolute monarchy, Communist party state, Corporate Statism (a single corporation controls everything)
- Competitive market (money): _, Merchant republic, Liberal Democracy, Cooperative State (every worker is a member of a cooperative or an independent worker, so everybody is a participant in the competitive market).
- Socialism (amenities): _, _, Social Democracy, Fully automated welfare.
- Nationalism (nationality, loyalty, and stability): _, Classical Republic, Nation-State, _
- Agrarian (food, land claim, growth): Elder council, Feudalism, Conservative Democracy, _
- Touristic (culture, tourism): _, City-state (non-imperialistic city-state like Florence), Microstate, Theme Park State
- Consensual (patriotism): Tribalism, Direct Democracy, Proportional Democracy, Statistical Democracy (statistically significant samples of the population are randomly selected to debate and make decisions).
- Liberty (era score, used both for getting golden age and score victory): Primitivism, _, Anarcho-collectivism, Anarcho-communism.
Each policy should have a cost, though they'll still generally be good. The most common cost should be money (for things like public education, public housing, professional army, etc.), but some can also cost amenities (like slavery, serfdom, corvée, forced labor, expropriation, etc.), faith (like state atheism), or reduce military cap (like military neutrality), etc.
Loyalty depends on nationality (starts at 100% when founded or 0% when conquered, can be modified by immigration, policies, or projects), religion, policies, and spy missions. It doesn’t depend directly on the population of nearby cities. If a city is disloyal to its owner (another civ has more loyalty), it doesn’t become a free city, but it gives half its science, gold, faith, culture to the civ it is loyal to, and the civ it is loyal too can use it to create military units. Production is still controlled by the civ that controls the city. A civilization doesn’t die until it has no loyal cities and no units. Loyalty goes down in all cities by some amount each time a policy or a government is changed. The amount of loyalty loss (and also the number of cities that will be disloyal and the risk of civil war) is indicated before one accepts the change and depends on the number of policies changed and how different are the governments.
Stability is based on average loyalty. If it is less than 50%, there is a random chance to have a civil war each turn. If there is a civil war, an AI is created and given half the cities (the most disloyal) and half the gold and faith. This AI is automatically at war with the civ it came from. They have the same nationality (nationality is a component of loyalty).
Also, each time a government is changed or a policy changed, loyalty should go down in every city (so stability too). Loyalty loss should depend on how much different is the new government. So governments of the same type don't cause a big drop, but the most opposite governments cause a big drop and have a high risk of causing a civil war. For the policy, it could be a 5 or 10 loyalty loss each time you change a policy unless it is for a successor policy. It will take a few turns for the stability to go back to normal, so you can't change the policies too frequently without having cities becoming disloyal or even having a civil war.
We should get 0 bonus for dark ages, 1 bonus for normal ages, and 2 for golden ages. There should not be any heroic age or dark age policy which makes the best move is to alternate dark ages and heroic ages. 25% of civs should get golden, 50% normal, and 25% dark rather than a threshold. Also, era scores should be the only source of score for score victory and the trigger for score victory should be the end of the future age which is triggered automatically when enough era scores have been obtained. So the score victory is a real victory that one can go for. In dark ages, one should be able to get 2 dedications to double era score but that doesn’t count for the score victory. For normal ages, it should be 1 dedication.
Bonuses could be:
- Expansion: bonuses to the production of settlers, initial buildings, and population of new cities, sea travel, Great explorers.
- Militarist: bonuses to military production, upgrade, maintenance cost and strength, great general and great admiral.
- Growth: bonuses to population growth and amenities.
- Science: bonuses to science yield and Great scientists.
- Culture: bonuses to culture and tourism yield, and Great writers, artists, musicians.
- Monumental: bonuses to wonder production and Great engineers.
- Merchant: bonuses to trade, money yield, Great merchants, and Great explorers.
- Influence: bonuses to influence, favor, religious spread, Great prophets, Great theologians, and Great diplomats.
Dedications should be thematic for each era and based on those categories:
- Expansion: settling new cities, especially on new continents or far away.
- Militarist: Win battles and conquer cities and civilizations.
- Growth: Be the first to reach a population threshold.
- Science: Be the first to discover new technology.
- Culture: Be the first to discover a new civics or getting some threshold of tourism.
- Monumental: Build a wonder.
- Merchant: Be the first to reach some amount of money from trade.
- Influence: Convert a city to your religion, become the suzerain of a city-state, get a diplomatic resolution you proposed approved.
Civilizations that have 4 unique units, 4 unique districts, and 4 leaders (4 could change, but I think it’s reasonable) that span the history of their location and have the name of a contemporary country or a region. For example:
- US: representative of North American native tribes, 13 colonies, industrial US, contemporary US.
- Mexico: representative of Mayas, Aztec, New Spain, Mexico
- Peru: representative of Inca, Vice-Royalty of Peru, modern Peru.
- UK: representative of British celts, Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, Middle Age England, Colonial Britain.
- France: representative of Gaul, Franks, Middle Age France, Revolutionary France.
- Spain: Iberians, Visigoths, al-Andalus, colonial Spain.
- Portugal: Lusitanian, Galicia, colonial Portugal.
- Germany: Germanic people, Holy Roman Empire, Prussia, modern Germany.
- Italy: Rome, Papal State, Italian Republics, modern Italy.
- Greece: Mycenaean, Athens, Sparta, Macedon.
- Turkey: Hittite, Byzantine, Ottomans, contemporary Turkey.
- North Africa: Cartage, Vandal kingdom, Berber kingdoms, French Colonial North Africa
- Egypt: Ancient Egypt, Ptolemaic Egypt, Fatimid Caliphate, modern Egypt.
- Mesopotamia: Sumer, Babylon, Seleucid Empire, Abbasid Caliphate.
- Iran: Achaemenid Empire, Parthian Empire, Sasanian Empire, Samanid Empire.
- Russia: Rus, Muscovy, Russian Empire, Soviet Union.
- Eurasian Steppe: Huns, Mongol empire, Golden Horde, Turkish tribes
- Greater India: Indus Valley, Maurya Empire, Mughal Empire, British India.
- China: Zhou dynasty, Han dynasty, Ming dynasty, contemporary China
Have a spherical map. One can have a spherical map by starting with an icosahedron, putting a pentagon on each corner (12) with the desired tile size, and then putting hexagonal tiles on the rest of the surface. It is easy to then deform it to look like a sphere (the deformation is small because an icosahedron is already close to a sphere). For the 12 pentagons, 2 will be the North Pole and South Pole natural wonders, and the 10 other ones can be hidden in mountain range or ocean. Discovering the North Pole and the South Pole can give era score and bonus yield.
After the discovery of The Enlightenment, atheism should start spreading naturally and progressively replace the religions.
Simultaneous play. Turns are split into 2 phases: the main one where everything but combat happens, the 2nd one for combat. Units can’t move during the combat phase (they attack neighboring units for melee or units in their range) and all the combats are planned before happening all at the same time. If a unit attacks a unit that is attacking another unit, it gets flanking bonus.
Simultaneous play allows for better multiplayer and better AI since the AI can plan at the same time as the player. The AI needs to be stronger. Use machine learning. On high difficulty, the AI evaluates more positions and takes more time. For higher difficulty, handicaps might still be needed, but it should be bonuses that increase through time (like in smoother difficulty mod, but it should be the default) rather than more initial settlers. Bonuses through time are much better to make the game interesting during the whole duration.
Larger maps should be available by default (without needing a mod). We should have access to at least maps that are 4 times bigger in both directions. Modern computers won’t have any issues running that and it will allow having Earth maps that make sense.
Harder eureka and inspiration. None of them should be obtained by default like “meeting another civilization” or “getting a government with 8 slots” or randomly like “finding a new continent”.
Diplomatic victory is modified. One needs to do many accomplishments to get it, which requires to have advanced technology and do projects that help every civilization.
- Fix climate change.
- Eliminate poverty, hunger, illiteracy, epidemics.
True alliance: allies win the game together. There can be one ally for each victory type except religion.
Improved diplomacy: declaration of wars and peace deals can be done with multiple players at the same time (a war score can help divide the gains). Grievance and reputation should be separated. You lose reputation if you break a deal, but gain grievance if you hurt another civ. You should not lose reputation for winning cities after being declared war upon or for declaring war with a casus belli and following its requirement. There should be vassals. Also, everybody should start at “no diplomatic relation” until you sign the first peace treaty with them (which requires writing) and you don’t get any reputation loss for attacking someone you have “no diplomatic relation” with. It should also be possible to attack and pillage without declaring war (just lose reputation and gain grievance) as it has been pretty standard for all history and is still common now. Open borders for military units should be limited to a specific number of units and a fixed duration. People don’t allow free for all open borders. On the other hand, civilians and religious units should have open border by default (Close border to civilian should be a diplomatic action that acquire grievance and that one doesn’t have at the beginning). Also, not respecting open borders should be allowed, it just causes grievance and loss of reputation (if a peace treaty has been signed).
Rather than having UN meetings (which should not happen before the atomic era realistically), everybody should be allowed to propose joint actions at any time as soon as they have discovered another civilization and have discovered “writing”. Joint actions should be realistic and anybody with diplomatic relations with the player proposing the action can choose to join it, fight it, or refuse to participate. They can be: conquer a civilization, defend a civilization, defend a city-state, embargo a civilization (refuse trade and pillage its trade routes), fight a heresy, promote a religion, etc. Actively participating in a joint action should improve reputation, while joining and doing nothing should reduce your reputation.
City-states should give their culture and science to the civilizations divided in proportion to the influence, in addition to a suzerain bonus rather than giving bonuses to buildings (which is too good for wide play and is not realistic). You should get influence on a city for doing something that impacts them rather than random quests. So things like trade route, religious spread, gift of gold, envoy units, spy, gift of units, gift of great work, military protection.
Amenities and housing are unified. Luxury resources are used only for money, they don’t generate amenities. (Luxury resources are mostly used by a small minority so they don’t matter in the life of the majority). What counts for example are access to water, housing districts, no hunger, security, and having yields comparable or higher to the average civilization in money, science and culture.
No buildings and most improvements are replaced by districts that are repeatable in a single city. All wonders are built on a district. Districts can be built on top of another which destroys the previous one or on top of a resource (by default, so without needing a mod). Examples of districts are:
- City center: generate amenities based on water access, terrain, and appeal. Example of wonder: Eiffel tower.
- Town: generate amenities based on water access, terrain, and appeal.
- Farm: generate food. Maybe 3 per slot and multiple slots, can be improved to more.
- Fishermen’s wharf: generate food. Maybe 3 per slot and multiple slots, can be improved to more.
- Pasture: generate food and production. Maybe 2 food, 1 prod.
- Stable: generate horse, camel.
- Elephant camp: generate elephant.
- Mine: generate strategy or luxury resource. Built on ore or gems deposits. They have a limited amount of resources before exhaustion. New deposits can be found with new technology.
- Quarry: generate production. Built on hills (for stone) or flood plain (for clay). Maybe 3 per slot and multiple slots, can be improved to more.
- Lumber mill (on a forest, near a river): generate production. Maybe 3 per slot and multiple slots, can be improved to more.
- Lumber camp (on a forest, near a Lumber mill): generate production. Cheaper than the mill itself.
- Charcoal pit (on a forest, near a river): Generate charcoal.
- Plantation: generate strategy or luxury resource.
- Holy site: generate faith and some other yield. Each holy site is of a different type. Mountain god holy site generates faith from mountains, river goddess generates faith and food from rivers, etc. It replaces pantheons. Example of wonder: Statue of Zeus, Temple of Artemis.
- Burial site: generate loyalty. Example of wonder: Stonehenge, Pyramid, Mausoleum, Terracotta Army, Taj Mahal.
- Garden: generate amenities. Example of wonder: Hanging gardens.
- Market: generate money from trade routes. Example of wonder: Petra.
- Trading port: generate money from trade routes. Examples of wonder: Colossus, Great Lighthouse, Statue of Liberty.
- Military port: generate XP, can defend and attack. Example of wonder: Venetian Arsenal.
- Encampment: generate XP, can defend and attack.
- Military academy: generate more XP.
- Place of worship: generate faith from the population in an area, doesn’t stack. Needs a religion. Example of wonder: Hagia Sophia.
- Craftsmanship district: generate money from the population in an area, doesn’t stack.
- Scholarship district: generate culture and science from the population in an area, doesn’t stack. Example of wonder: Great library.
- Museum district: generate culture and tourism. Example of wonder: Louvre, Hermitage.
- Theatre district: generate culture and amenities from the population in an area, doesn’t stack.
- Amphitheater district: generate amenities and money from the population in an area, doesn’t stack. Example of wonder: Colosseum.
- Stadium district: generate amenities and tourism from the population in an area, doesn’t stack. Example of wonder: Maracana.
- University: generate science and production from the population in an area, doesn’t stack. Example of wonder: Oxford
- Financial district: generate money from the population in an area, doesn’t stack. Example of wonder: Big Ben.
- Industrial zone: generate gold and production from the population in an area, doesn’t stack. Example of wonder: Ruhr Valley
- Biology Research lab: generate science from unimproved land in an area.
- Observatory: generate science from adjacent mountain tiles.
- Technology district: generate science and money from the population in an area, doesn’t stack.
- Government plaza: boost loyalty in the range around it, give other bonuses based on government and legacy bonuses based on earlier tier last governments. Capital city center gets by default the same bonuses and loyalty boost as a government plaza. They should have a maintenance cost that increases with more complex governments.
- Etc.
There should be projects to improve districts and give them more citizen slots. That will improve tall play. Also, citizen slots need to be good like in civ 4 and 5, not useless like in civ 6.
It should be possible to acquire debt once financial districts have been built. With the debt limit set proportionally to the yield of all the financial districts. The interest rate could be at around 5%. Public debt has been a very common feature in history especially in times of war.
To get a Wonder, one must first get wonder points for the specific kind of wonder by building district projects. Then they claim the wonder, and they are the only one who can build it. Unused wonder points remain useful as they are multiple wonders in the same categories. Categories of wonder could be:
- Burial
- Spiritual
- Artistic
- Scientific
- Commercial
- Industrial
- Military
Additional great people type:
- Great navigator. For example Zheng He, Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, Ferdinand Magellan, James Cook. Gives bonuses to trade, colonization of new continents, and exploration. Points from trading port and trade route, while great admiral gets point from military ports and naval combat.
- Great theologian. Gives bonuses to faith and religion. Available after getting a great prophet or when all the great prophets have been given.
- Great diplomat. Improve influence on a city-state. Improve relation with another civ.
Some great people should be changed:
- Great scientist’s Eureka should be only theirs. Euclid should be the only way to get Eureka for mathematics and Alan Turing the only way to get Eureka for computer for example.
- Some Great writers should provide Inspiration rather than great works.
- Some Great musicians should do concerts to gain tourism (replace rock bands) rather than great works. (Especially the later ones for which there is not enough turns for the Great Work to be useful)
- Some Great artists should provide raw culture rather than great works.
Cities' usable tile range is not limited to 3 but depends on technology, movement cost, and resources. Tiles that are easier to reach thanks to river or coastal travel can be farther than 3 tiles even in the ancient era, while one won’t be able to use tiles hidden by mountains and the range will be more limited when it’s hilly. Technology and consumption of horses or oil increase the range. To make things clearer, water tiles should have a 1/3 movement cost rather than units having their movement increased when going in the water (horse-based units should have their movement lowered to the one of a unit without a horse though). Cities should acquire the closest tiles in movement cost first rather than absolute range. So their land will grow along rivers, coast, and roads first rather than being circular. It makes much more sense historically than a city will use lands connected to it by rivers, sea, or roads.
It should be possible to annex another city to a city if they are close enough. Then the city center of the annexed city becomes a town.
Growth should be based on a percentage growth that depends on health. Hunger reduces health, but having a food surplus does not create people. Food surplus is automatically sent to nearby cities with a penalty due to distance (maybe -10% per movement cost first, but is reduced by technology such as refrigeration, and usage of horses or oil). There is also growth from immigration from cities with low amenities to cities with higher amenities.
Engineers can build aqueducts, sewers, canals, roads, and walls on the boundary of the tiles. They can also build forts and some other military improvements on the tiles, which generate defense and XP for military units. And they can transport production by being built in a city and expanded in another city center. They should also be able to build siege weapons. They can be created with a variable amount of production and they disappear when the production is used up. Aqueducts, sewers, canals, walls, forts, etc. need a specific amount of production rather than being built. They cost money per turn.
More terrains, based on real climate. One needs to have discovered a staple plant adapted to this climate to create a farm, or an animal adapted to this climate for a pasture, or a luxury plant adapted to this climate for a plantation.
- Tropical rainforest (af): Reduce growth and units health. Natural disaster: mosquito-borne disease outbreak. Always forest. Can have wetland, hills, and flood plains.
- Tropical monsoon (am): Reduce growth and units health. Natural disaster: mosquito-borne disease outbreak, tropical storm. Can have forest, wetland, hills, and flood plains.
- Tropical savanna (aw/as): Natural disaster: drought, tropical storm. Can have wetland, hills, and flood plains.
- Desert (bw): no yield unless flood plains, reduce growth and units health, cannot have farms or pasture. Natural disaster: sand storm. Can have hills, and flood plains.
- Steppe (bs): Cannot have farms. Natural disaster: drought. Can have hills, and flood plains.
- Oceanic (cf): Bonus growth. Natural disaster: subtropical storm. Can have forest, wetland, hills, and flood plains.
- Dry season temperate (cw/cs): Bonus growth. Natural disaster: subtropical storm, drought. Can have forest, wetland, hills, and flood plains.
- Hot Continental (dxa): Natural disaster: subtropical storm, snowstorm. Can have forest, wetland, hills, and flood plains.
- Warm Continence (dxb): Reduce growth. Natural disaster: subtropical storm, snowstorm. Can have forest, wetland, hills, and flood plains.
- Subarctic (dxc/dxd): Low yield, reduce growth and units health, cannot have farms or pasture. Natural disaster: snowstorm. Can have forest, wetland, hills, and flood plains.
- Tundra (et): No yield, reduce health, cannot have farms or pasture. Can have hills. (Tundra should be rare and only very North, only the extreme North of Canada and Russia are tundra, it’s not that common)
- Ice Cap (ef): No yield, reduce health, cannot build anything.
- Warm Mountain: No yield, reduce health, can only build a few select districts like Terrace farms. Natural disaster: landslide.
- Cold Mountain: No yield, reduce health, can only build a few select districts like ski resorts. Natural disaster: snowslide.
- Cold Volcano: No yield, reduce health, cannot build anything. Natural disaster: snowslide, volcanic eruption. Increase adjacent production and food yield.
- Warm Volcano: No yield, reduce health, cannot build anything. Natural disaster: landslide, volcanic eruption. Increase adjacent production and food yield.
Also, have additional features such as wetlands, hills, forests, and flood plains. All terrains have an altitude that is used for combat and aqueducts (go downstream from mountain, lake, or river) and sewers (go downstream to river or ocean). Hills and forests should reduce food and increase production. Wetland should just reduce food and health. Flood plains should increase food. The base yield should be something like 2 food + 1 prod for most terrains since it represents people hunting animals and gathering plants which produce mostly food but also some production from bones, skin, and hard parts of plants.
The variety in terrains matters because they’ll look different and that’s more realistic and they’ll grow different luxury, staple plants, and animals. Also, some will have different natural disasters and reduced yield or no yield at all.
Additional disasters: flood in flood plains and low coastal areas, earthquake in some areas, epidemics (start randomly and move through trade routes).
Disasters should not improve yields. Flood plains and tiles neighboring a volcano should have a bonus yield, but they should not keep improving at each flood or eruption.
Climate change should only increase sea-level rise, floods, droughts, storms. Not volcanoes, comets, earthquakes, etc.
Wildfires should have a chance to happen when there is a drought on a forest tile and can move to other forest tiles in the drought.
The units can be on the center of a tile or one of the 6 corners, and one must pass through one of the corners before getting to another tile (equivalent to zoom out by 2, but only for military and unit movement purposes). Rivers and canals (both on the boundary) can be used by ships. The cost of movement of the boundary of 2 tiles is the minimum between the 2 unless it’s a river or canal, then it’s the cost of a water tile.
Units can move all together in a formation. Only the movement cost of the center unit is considered (so the other follows while ignoring terrain unless it’s a mountain, then they move in the formation to fit, but still the same center unit determines the movement cost). It will make moving armies easier.
Military and civilian units cost strategic resources, people, and gold, and potentially production (mostly for complex units like tanks and planes, simple warriors do not cost any production), and then have a very high maintenance cost in money. The limit on the number of units is mostly based on money and on a military supply which is a percentage of the population depending on policies (one cannot transform all his people into soldiers even with a lot of gold). Production is mostly for districts. We can’t use wood and rocks to build soldiers. On the other hand, districts cannot be built with money. Soldiers can be sent back to a city after the war or kept for XP. They accumulate XP slowly when fortified in a military improvement or district.
There should be a patriotism yield that is equivalent to money but must be spent each turn (in maintenance or creating units for example). It should be the only way to pay maintenance before the currency is discovered. It should be generated depending on population, amenities, and policies.
Border growth should be caused by getting growth points on neighboring tiles. Those points should be caused by population growth, district, policies, and money, but not culture. It should be possible to buy the tiles of other civilizations, part of the money will go to the other civilization and part will disappear (go to the locals essentially). The other civilization will get grievance and will have the opportunity to buy back the land without grievance (though it will cost more than what it received since some money is lost). Wealthy civilizations can expand their territory that way. Some policies can make your land more expansive to other civilizations or make it impossible for them to buy your lands.
Spies can be created as soon as writing is discovered. They are limited by their gold cost rather than by a strict limit. They can move as units and can attack military units (by poisoning or disorganizing them) in addition to attacking districts.
Trade routes only exist to link luxury to cities, and luxury only exists for that. Luxuries generate money based on their amount and rarity in all the cities they can reach by trade route minus a transport fee. Routes can be created by a project. Each city has some projects each connecting it to a nearby city (maybe 6 projects, one for each of the closest cities, including foreign). So roads don’t have to be built with engineers if they connect cities. The main goal of connecting cities is to trade luxury. Cities can also be connected by water if a path by water tiles is known and they have the needed technology.
Strategic resources are traded in a world market where everybody can put a sell and buy price for some number of resources. Trade only happens when the selling price + transport fee is below the buy price (the cost will be the average between the 2).
More strategic resources:
- Copper and tin: separate resources so trade might be needed. Needed for Bronze Age units. Also for some Wonders.
- Elephant, camel: for military units using them.
- Charcoal: everything that needs iron also needs that. Can also be used with niter for gunpowder units. Can also be used for heating for amenities in cold climates.
- Lead for some units like slinger using lead ammunition or javelineers using javelin with lead weight.
- Natural gas: for electricity. Needs pipeline built by engineers. (Need a natural gas power plant)
Also, many strategic resources have other usages in addition to their current units:
- Horse: used to improve farms, can be used by land trade routes.
- Niter: used for all gunpowder units and to improve farms. Can be made from oil once the Haber-Bosch process is discovered. Should only be found in arid terrain and small islands (because of guano islands).
- Oil: used to improve farms, can be used by land trade routes. Some amount is used to generate amenities for heating and transport during the modern era.
- Coal: Used for all gunpowder units and for anything that requires steel. Can be used by land trade routes. Some amount is used to generate amenities for heating depending on the climate.
- Iron: Used for all units with iron armor and weapons, even when they are mounted (needs both some iron and some horses). Used for many districts and wonders. Used for tanks and many other modern units, districts, and wonders. Iron is used everywhere.
When oil or coal is used to move units, it should be a cost per movement, rather than 1 per turn no matter if it moves or not. Also, niter and coal for gunpowder should be used for each attack, same for bronze (copper+tin) or iron for ranged units.
When a battle is won. We should get some resources and some prisoners, which can be ransomed for goal or forced to work to get extra population. Some civilizations or policies can allow to execute them for faith or patriotism bonuses.
Units can need multiple resources.
- Bronze Age units: all need at least copper+tin. Can need horses too (for chariot). Ranged units need resources for each attack.
- Iron Age/Middle-Age units: all need iron+charcoal. Can need horses, camel or elephant too. Ranged units need resources for each attack.
- Renaissance units: all need niter+charcoal per attack and charcoal+iron to be built. Charcoal is used both for gunpowder and steel.
- Modern and contemporary units: need niter+charcoal unless it has the technology to make gunpowder without them. Need iron+charcoal or iron+coal if they have steel armor. Planes need aluminum. All mobile units need oil for movement.
Nuclear power plants should not release CO2 and they should be good to avoid global warming.
Nuclear fusion should be one of the future techs and allow to build nuclear fusion power plants.
Divide the ancient era into the Stone Age era, Bronze Age era, and Iron Age era.
A wide civics tree (could be called humanities rather than civics). For example, could start with 3 civics (agrarian, pastoral, and seafaring) rather than 1, then expand in width. It is not expected to complete them all. Contains special military units, special districts, wonders, in addition of policies and governments (They can also require some technologies).
Military units should be changed. For the land units, a better set of units would be:
- Slow, range 3: stone slinger (available from start), clay slinger, lead slinger, crossbowman, field cannon, field artillery, mobile missile launcher.
- Slow, range 2: stone archer (available from start), bronze archer, iron archer, composite stone archer, composite bronze archer, composite iron archer. (Composite archers are stronger but are weakened in wet climates.), rifleman, sniper.
- Slow, range 1: light stone javelineers (available from start), light bronze javelineers, light iron javelineers, arquebusiers, musketeers, infantry.
- Slow, melee: stone spearmen (available from start), bronze spearmen, iron spearmen (need iron).
- Fast, range 2: chariot, horse archer, camel archer, dragoon, helicopter.
- Fast, range 1: horse javelineers, camel javelineers, tank, modern tank.
- Fast, range 1 or melee: cuirassier (use pistol and lance or saber).
- Slow, range 1 or melee: war elephant (usually has an archer platform, but can also charge), line infantry (melee because of bayonet charge).
- Fast, melee: horsemen, men-at-arms [men-at-arms are the real term for the military role of a knight, it’s not an infantry unit though they could fight dismounted in some occasion like any cavalry, especially in siege], demi-lancer.
- Exploration specialists: scout, horse rider, reconnaissance vehicles, drones.
- Support healing: supply chariot, supply vehicles. Heal units on the same tile and nearby. Reduce damage from the terrain.
- Support speed: transport chariot, armored vehicles. Increase speed of slow units to the speed of fast units.
- Immobile Siege: catapult, trebuchet (made by engineers)
- Immobile garrison: ballista, machine gun, missile launcher (created by cities. Cities don’t have range attack when walls are created, they need that)
- Mobile siege: Bombard, Artillery, Rocket Artillery.
Cultural units (available through the civics tree, so not everybody will have access to them). They are some units that were common in a geographical area but not unique to a civilization.
- Slow, melee units that are stronger in front of them (increased even more when defending against cavalry) but weaker on their rear: phalanx, pikemen.
- Slow, range 1 or melee: heavy javelineers, heavy lead javelineers, pike, and shot.
- Fast, melee: knight (noble men-at-arms in Europe, will usually have better equipment since they are wealthier.)
- Slow, melee: halberdiers, great swordsmen, poleaxemen.
- Etc.
With my idea that units can be on the corners of tiles, a range of 1 is half a tile, a range of 2 a full tile (there can still be 2 units between your unit and the one you attack), and a range of 3 a tile and a half.
No GDR, they make no sense. We will never build giant bipedal weapons. We will big giant ships, huge planes, big tanks, and maybe someday huge spaceships, but never giant bipeds (it doesn’t make any sense to do so, it is strictly less good than a tank.)
Range units should have stronger damage when attacking from a smaller range (since missiles slow down when moving), but units with a smaller range should still be stronger at their range, so they are useful.
Important changes to be more historically correct are that chariot should be used for archers in combat and transport, but not for heavy cavalry. Also, spearmen should be the basic melee units. They were the most common and basic type of soldiers, not anti-cavalry units. Also, all gun units should be ranged units.
A lot more governments (one for most policy types and levels: tribal/ancient, classical/middle-age/renaissance [need writing, except for Inca], modern/contemporary [need printing], future [need artificial intelligence]) and more policy types. No wildcard policy (though there should be still wildcard slots for flexibility). The policy types could be:
- Militaristic (unit production, cost, XP, strength, etc.): Chiefdom, Empire, Fascism, Fully Automated Warfare State.
- Diplomatic (trade, diplomacy, and alliance): _, Confederation, Multi-National Union, World Union
- Rationalist (science): _, _, Technocracy, AI-government
- Spiritual (faith): God-King, Theocracy, Religious Republic, _
- Authoritarianism (production): _, Absolute monarchy, Communist party state, Corporate Statism (a single corporation controls everything)
- Competitive market (money): _, Merchant republic, Liberal Democracy, Cooperative State (every worker is a member of a cooperative or an independent worker, so everybody is a participant in the competitive market).
- Socialism (amenities): _, _, Social Democracy, Fully automated welfare.
- Nationalism (nationality, loyalty, and stability): _, Classical Republic, Nation-State, _
- Agrarian (food, land claim, growth): Elder council, Feudalism, Conservative Democracy, _
- Touristic (culture, tourism): _, City-state (non-imperialistic city-state like Florence), Microstate, Theme Park State
- Consensual (patriotism): Tribalism, Direct Democracy, Proportional Democracy, Statistical Democracy (statistically significant samples of the population are randomly selected to debate and make decisions).
- Liberty (era score, used both for getting golden age and score victory): Primitivism, _, Anarcho-collectivism, Anarcho-communism.
Each policy should have a cost, though they'll still generally be good. The most common cost should be money (for things like public education, public housing, professional army, etc.), but some can also cost amenities (like slavery, serfdom, corvée, forced labor, expropriation, etc.), faith (like state atheism), or reduce military cap (like military neutrality), etc.
Loyalty depends on nationality (starts at 100% when founded or 0% when conquered, can be modified by immigration, policies, or projects), religion, policies, and spy missions. It doesn’t depend directly on the population of nearby cities. If a city is disloyal to its owner (another civ has more loyalty), it doesn’t become a free city, but it gives half its science, gold, faith, culture to the civ it is loyal to, and the civ it is loyal too can use it to create military units. Production is still controlled by the civ that controls the city. A civilization doesn’t die until it has no loyal cities and no units. Loyalty goes down in all cities by some amount each time a policy or a government is changed. The amount of loyalty loss (and also the number of cities that will be disloyal and the risk of civil war) is indicated before one accepts the change and depends on the number of policies changed and how different are the governments.
Stability is based on average loyalty. If it is less than 50%, there is a random chance to have a civil war each turn. If there is a civil war, an AI is created and given half the cities (the most disloyal) and half the gold and faith. This AI is automatically at war with the civ it came from. They have the same nationality (nationality is a component of loyalty).
Also, each time a government is changed or a policy changed, loyalty should go down in every city (so stability too). Loyalty loss should depend on how much different is the new government. So governments of the same type don't cause a big drop, but the most opposite governments cause a big drop and have a high risk of causing a civil war. For the policy, it could be a 5 or 10 loyalty loss each time you change a policy unless it is for a successor policy. It will take a few turns for the stability to go back to normal, so you can't change the policies too frequently without having cities becoming disloyal or even having a civil war.
We should get 0 bonus for dark ages, 1 bonus for normal ages, and 2 for golden ages. There should not be any heroic age or dark age policy which makes the best move is to alternate dark ages and heroic ages. 25% of civs should get golden, 50% normal, and 25% dark rather than a threshold. Also, era scores should be the only source of score for score victory and the trigger for score victory should be the end of the future age which is triggered automatically when enough era scores have been obtained. So the score victory is a real victory that one can go for. In dark ages, one should be able to get 2 dedications to double era score but that doesn’t count for the score victory. For normal ages, it should be 1 dedication.
Bonuses could be:
- Expansion: bonuses to the production of settlers, initial buildings, and population of new cities, sea travel, Great explorers.
- Militarist: bonuses to military production, upgrade, maintenance cost and strength, great general and great admiral.
- Growth: bonuses to population growth and amenities.
- Science: bonuses to science yield and Great scientists.
- Culture: bonuses to culture and tourism yield, and Great writers, artists, musicians.
- Monumental: bonuses to wonder production and Great engineers.
- Merchant: bonuses to trade, money yield, Great merchants, and Great explorers.
- Influence: bonuses to influence, favor, religious spread, Great prophets, Great theologians, and Great diplomats.
Dedications should be thematic for each era and based on those categories:
- Expansion: settling new cities, especially on new continents or far away.
- Militarist: Win battles and conquer cities and civilizations.
- Growth: Be the first to reach a population threshold.
- Science: Be the first to discover new technology.
- Culture: Be the first to discover a new civics or getting some threshold of tourism.
- Monumental: Build a wonder.
- Merchant: Be the first to reach some amount of money from trade.
- Influence: Convert a city to your religion, become the suzerain of a city-state, get a diplomatic resolution you proposed approved.
Civilizations that have 4 unique units, 4 unique districts, and 4 leaders (4 could change, but I think it’s reasonable) that span the history of their location and have the name of a contemporary country or a region. For example:
- US: representative of North American native tribes, 13 colonies, industrial US, contemporary US.
- Mexico: representative of Mayas, Aztec, New Spain, Mexico
- Peru: representative of Inca, Vice-Royalty of Peru, modern Peru.
- UK: representative of British celts, Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, Middle Age England, Colonial Britain.
- France: representative of Gaul, Franks, Middle Age France, Revolutionary France.
- Spain: Iberians, Visigoths, al-Andalus, colonial Spain.
- Portugal: Lusitanian, Galicia, colonial Portugal.
- Germany: Germanic people, Holy Roman Empire, Prussia, modern Germany.
- Italy: Rome, Papal State, Italian Republics, modern Italy.
- Greece: Mycenaean, Athens, Sparta, Macedon.
- Turkey: Hittite, Byzantine, Ottomans, contemporary Turkey.
- North Africa: Cartage, Vandal kingdom, Berber kingdoms, French Colonial North Africa
- Egypt: Ancient Egypt, Ptolemaic Egypt, Fatimid Caliphate, modern Egypt.
- Mesopotamia: Sumer, Babylon, Seleucid Empire, Abbasid Caliphate.
- Iran: Achaemenid Empire, Parthian Empire, Sasanian Empire, Samanid Empire.
- Russia: Rus, Muscovy, Russian Empire, Soviet Union.
- Eurasian Steppe: Huns, Mongol empire, Golden Horde, Turkish tribes
- Greater India: Indus Valley, Maurya Empire, Mughal Empire, British India.
- China: Zhou dynasty, Han dynasty, Ming dynasty, contemporary China
Have a spherical map. One can have a spherical map by starting with an icosahedron, putting a pentagon on each corner (12) with the desired tile size, and then putting hexagonal tiles on the rest of the surface. It is easy to then deform it to look like a sphere (the deformation is small because an icosahedron is already close to a sphere). For the 12 pentagons, 2 will be the North Pole and South Pole natural wonders, and the 10 other ones can be hidden in mountain range or ocean. Discovering the North Pole and the South Pole can give era score and bonus yield.
After the discovery of The Enlightenment, atheism should start spreading naturally and progressively replace the religions.
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