Cyon
Cosmonaut
I really hope that G&K is not the last expansion and that it will come a lot of more good dlc civs, I have however for a time thought a lot about how I would make a new Civ game for scratch ie ideas for a coming Civ VI.
It's not a simulation...
...but why not? I love board games and the compatible aspect of Civ (which I actually think is better implemented in "Civilization the Board game") but a think that a more sandbox simulation based game could work really well. The strength with computer games is that you can make a lot of rules very complicated without people actually have to understand exact how work as long as you can get the basic principle. So to reduce un-fun micromanagement and increase realism --> Organic simulation!
What does the action building a worker with hammers that you found on a hill to then use that worker to build a farm besides a river actually represent? And is it fun when it is such a no-brainier? Did people actually build settlers, send them away to form new citys at 5000 BC?
Probably not.
Organic Simulation
In my Civ VI game would you chose a spot along the trail where your people have wandered in the beginning for you first city. Farms would build themselves slowly along rivers or in areas with better soil. Small roads would form between your city and other cities automatically. Your people would explore the surroundings and slowly discover different minerals and plants opening small scale mines and lumber mills. where trade routes converge, or farms cluster, or near mines and such that are not place directly to your capital would the seeds to new cites form.
The player would (at least in the beginning) be more of a gardener than a architect. Choose to establish a tax office in a new village formed along a crossroad to make it a city. Hire people to pave the path into a kings road to increase both cities growth and commerce. Encourage a small spontaneous pit to transform it to the kings mine (and only where there actually are minerals, why should you be able to build a mine anywhere else?).
What to decide over
What you can decide over and what you cant should reflect more what a Ruler in that time would have decided over. And let it change over time. Later in some kind of age of exploring could you be able to send settlers and form settlements on other continents (and settlers should not cost anything to make, what should cost should be supporting those new cites).
The same with techs, instead of everyone choosing before hand which tech to research and every player having to invent the wheel by them self, could players choices instead affect lead to techs.
If you have tamed the ox and have at least two cites will you have a certain chance every turn of inventing the wheel. And if you have not invented the wheel but have friendly relationship to your neighbor (and therefore after a while probably some paths between your cites) would you after a while learn that tech to. Only certain military techs was probably intentionally researhed in the classical era. The kind of choose a tech to research should come later.
Customable civs and starting 200 000 BC
Some one suggested that you should be able to decide yourself which trait and UU/UB/UI your civ should have in line with Custom aspect of religion in G&K, which in it self would not be so fun. But maybe could you do it the other way around, choosing certain attributes by your actions in the begging which decides if your civ will be a Bantu civ or a Indo-European one, new actions --> new attributes --> you are a nothern European civ and therefour will have UA X which is shared by a few other norther European civs, more actions --> you are German * Menu pops up* "Would you like to play as Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony or Hanover" with respective unique stuff.
The actual actions could be quite simple, with the start conditions Earth 200 000 BC (Standard setting) you start somewhere between southern Africa and Rift Valley. You controll a small tribe that haves maybe five actions, you choose to put two actions on investigating a jungle hex, one two stay closer two some other tribes and one to walk north along the coast, you hit next turn and 15.000 years have passed. Your jungle exporation have increased your ability to later during the stonage phase finding and taming important crops like wheat or shorgum, since you staid in one hex more than once have you tribe increased a bit and your staing close to other tribes have increased your ability to trade and benefit from other culures. by moving one step north have you a better chance of later choosing to leave Africa if you want to.
With chooses like that would you receive a couple of characteristics that will decide which civ you become together with geography. If you don't go north at all will you atomaticly become a Khoi San people with small chances of actually forming a Civ, if you race along the coast to fast will you be Australian Aborigines. Spending a lot of time with other tribes will make your civ a part of a large language groop as Bantu or Indo-European and give you bonuses for trade, science and cultural exhange, but spending time away from the main group will letting you form stronger internal bonds, and gives bonus at exploring, maybe letting you be a civ native America.
so after five 15.000 year turns would you know which language fammily your civ would have togher with some parts of your diffrent Uniqe Attributes (which not all would be uniqe, rather shared and uniqe attributes), you will now be standing looking out over the red sea contemplating whatever to crossing or not. if you will cross will you probably die, better to wait five 10.000 year turns more. So 70 000 BC after ten turns will you have better climate to cross, the barren Arabian peninsula is temporally green, stay and become a Bantu or Nilo-Saharan civ or cross to be anything else. You cant cross if you have timed it wrong, and have you stayed to much in one place will your people be reluctant be the first one to cross.
Afer the next five 7500 year turns will you have your first Permanent Attributes that you keep when you form a civ, you will probably travel to India (europe was just a lot of ice, better not go there) and you will start to find a few intresting crops (but not tamed them jet) and discoverd raft building if you traveled between islands, or canoes if you travelde slowly along a river, or archery if you stayed and hunted a lot. The Ice age will have reached its peak.
During the last long lasting turns, the five (5000 years appart) ones will you have to settle. You will have at least half of the aspects of your attributes and you will find the last crops, and starting to tame the first animals. The ice age have ended, its time for agriculture!
The last five 1000 year turns will be focused on trying to form your first city (which demands a certain population density, it is not enough to have a large tribe you will need to concentrate your people to a river land, a lake, a oasis or if geography fails you, will you need to use religious rites to form a feast location), forming bonds with your neighbors, choosing a few religious and culural traits. After that is it 7,500 BP (5,500 BC) and your civ is formed!
You should of course be able to skip these 20 pre historic turns if you prefer to but it could add some intresting flavor to the game, and put things more in perspective.
A lot of Civs
I think that I would copy some ideas from Rhye's and Fall of Civilization (which I haven't played but heard about), like if you play england and colonize North America will there soner or later be a revolution and you have to choose to play as USA or England. Sumer, Assyria and other ancient civs should also have the possibility to transform some how.
The idea behind language groups is that it should also be a certain culture likeness value, germany should have bether realtionship with sweden by defult than with egypt, in the beggining. Spending time togher during the first 20 turns could also affect realtions, so maybe the the tribe that become Germany lingered in egypt a while before they setteled down in europe, so Germany and Egypt would anyhow share some cultural characteristics. Some civs would maybe even require that two cultures mix to rise, like the Swahili that east bantu tribes or Arabian ones can shoose to become if the meet and start to trade a lot.
UB/UU/UI and traits can be partly shared between civilizations, in that way can you have both more and less civs than CiV haves. If you don't have two find/make three uniqe thing for every civ would it be a lot less work, even the leader heads could be interactive in some cases partly generic and change. Let the time your tribe spends at diffrent lattiudes decide the skin color of you leader and units, and the which other civs you have cultural exchange with decide the cloathing, the type of geographic direction (rivers, maritime, desert...) the bakground of the leader head. let losly related civs share some attributes, closly related civs coulds sometimes share UU with some diffrences, A baylonian bowman could have a promotion that differs it from the assyrian bowman....
In that whay could you have a few regoinal civs maybe 20 (mesopetamian, slavic, east bantu, sino-tibeatan...) totally which mirrors attributes and some Uniqe stuff but letting each having a lot of flavors letting the total amount of civs ranging over a 100. Big important civs could also start as part s of them selfes, instead of starting as germany must you try to unify the german speakin kingdoms as preussia or unify india or china or brittain...
More to come
Map, Start settings, how to tame mammoths
More on Techs
international trade
culture
and more
----------------
I will edit this to be more clear later on.
Pleas comment my ideas or post links to your own threads about how you would like to have Civ VI!
Sorry for long and messy post
It's not a simulation...
...but why not? I love board games and the compatible aspect of Civ (which I actually think is better implemented in "Civilization the Board game") but a think that a more sandbox simulation based game could work really well. The strength with computer games is that you can make a lot of rules very complicated without people actually have to understand exact how work as long as you can get the basic principle. So to reduce un-fun micromanagement and increase realism --> Organic simulation!
What does the action building a worker with hammers that you found on a hill to then use that worker to build a farm besides a river actually represent? And is it fun when it is such a no-brainier? Did people actually build settlers, send them away to form new citys at 5000 BC?
Probably not.
Organic Simulation
In my Civ VI game would you chose a spot along the trail where your people have wandered in the beginning for you first city. Farms would build themselves slowly along rivers or in areas with better soil. Small roads would form between your city and other cities automatically. Your people would explore the surroundings and slowly discover different minerals and plants opening small scale mines and lumber mills. where trade routes converge, or farms cluster, or near mines and such that are not place directly to your capital would the seeds to new cites form.
The player would (at least in the beginning) be more of a gardener than a architect. Choose to establish a tax office in a new village formed along a crossroad to make it a city. Hire people to pave the path into a kings road to increase both cities growth and commerce. Encourage a small spontaneous pit to transform it to the kings mine (and only where there actually are minerals, why should you be able to build a mine anywhere else?).
What to decide over
What you can decide over and what you cant should reflect more what a Ruler in that time would have decided over. And let it change over time. Later in some kind of age of exploring could you be able to send settlers and form settlements on other continents (and settlers should not cost anything to make, what should cost should be supporting those new cites).
The same with techs, instead of everyone choosing before hand which tech to research and every player having to invent the wheel by them self, could players choices instead affect lead to techs.
If you have tamed the ox and have at least two cites will you have a certain chance every turn of inventing the wheel. And if you have not invented the wheel but have friendly relationship to your neighbor (and therefore after a while probably some paths between your cites) would you after a while learn that tech to. Only certain military techs was probably intentionally researhed in the classical era. The kind of choose a tech to research should come later.
Customable civs and starting 200 000 BC
Some one suggested that you should be able to decide yourself which trait and UU/UB/UI your civ should have in line with Custom aspect of religion in G&K, which in it self would not be so fun. But maybe could you do it the other way around, choosing certain attributes by your actions in the begging which decides if your civ will be a Bantu civ or a Indo-European one, new actions --> new attributes --> you are a nothern European civ and therefour will have UA X which is shared by a few other norther European civs, more actions --> you are German * Menu pops up* "Would you like to play as Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony or Hanover" with respective unique stuff.
The actual actions could be quite simple, with the start conditions Earth 200 000 BC (Standard setting) you start somewhere between southern Africa and Rift Valley. You controll a small tribe that haves maybe five actions, you choose to put two actions on investigating a jungle hex, one two stay closer two some other tribes and one to walk north along the coast, you hit next turn and 15.000 years have passed. Your jungle exporation have increased your ability to later during the stonage phase finding and taming important crops like wheat or shorgum, since you staid in one hex more than once have you tribe increased a bit and your staing close to other tribes have increased your ability to trade and benefit from other culures. by moving one step north have you a better chance of later choosing to leave Africa if you want to.
With chooses like that would you receive a couple of characteristics that will decide which civ you become together with geography. If you don't go north at all will you atomaticly become a Khoi San people with small chances of actually forming a Civ, if you race along the coast to fast will you be Australian Aborigines. Spending a lot of time with other tribes will make your civ a part of a large language groop as Bantu or Indo-European and give you bonuses for trade, science and cultural exhange, but spending time away from the main group will letting you form stronger internal bonds, and gives bonus at exploring, maybe letting you be a civ native America.
so after five 15.000 year turns would you know which language fammily your civ would have togher with some parts of your diffrent Uniqe Attributes (which not all would be uniqe, rather shared and uniqe attributes), you will now be standing looking out over the red sea contemplating whatever to crossing or not. if you will cross will you probably die, better to wait five 10.000 year turns more. So 70 000 BC after ten turns will you have better climate to cross, the barren Arabian peninsula is temporally green, stay and become a Bantu or Nilo-Saharan civ or cross to be anything else. You cant cross if you have timed it wrong, and have you stayed to much in one place will your people be reluctant be the first one to cross.
Afer the next five 7500 year turns will you have your first Permanent Attributes that you keep when you form a civ, you will probably travel to India (europe was just a lot of ice, better not go there) and you will start to find a few intresting crops (but not tamed them jet) and discoverd raft building if you traveled between islands, or canoes if you travelde slowly along a river, or archery if you stayed and hunted a lot. The Ice age will have reached its peak.
During the last long lasting turns, the five (5000 years appart) ones will you have to settle. You will have at least half of the aspects of your attributes and you will find the last crops, and starting to tame the first animals. The ice age have ended, its time for agriculture!
The last five 1000 year turns will be focused on trying to form your first city (which demands a certain population density, it is not enough to have a large tribe you will need to concentrate your people to a river land, a lake, a oasis or if geography fails you, will you need to use religious rites to form a feast location), forming bonds with your neighbors, choosing a few religious and culural traits. After that is it 7,500 BP (5,500 BC) and your civ is formed!
You should of course be able to skip these 20 pre historic turns if you prefer to but it could add some intresting flavor to the game, and put things more in perspective.
A lot of Civs
I think that I would copy some ideas from Rhye's and Fall of Civilization (which I haven't played but heard about), like if you play england and colonize North America will there soner or later be a revolution and you have to choose to play as USA or England. Sumer, Assyria and other ancient civs should also have the possibility to transform some how.
The idea behind language groups is that it should also be a certain culture likeness value, germany should have bether realtionship with sweden by defult than with egypt, in the beggining. Spending time togher during the first 20 turns could also affect realtions, so maybe the the tribe that become Germany lingered in egypt a while before they setteled down in europe, so Germany and Egypt would anyhow share some cultural characteristics. Some civs would maybe even require that two cultures mix to rise, like the Swahili that east bantu tribes or Arabian ones can shoose to become if the meet and start to trade a lot.
UB/UU/UI and traits can be partly shared between civilizations, in that way can you have both more and less civs than CiV haves. If you don't have two find/make three uniqe thing for every civ would it be a lot less work, even the leader heads could be interactive in some cases partly generic and change. Let the time your tribe spends at diffrent lattiudes decide the skin color of you leader and units, and the which other civs you have cultural exchange with decide the cloathing, the type of geographic direction (rivers, maritime, desert...) the bakground of the leader head. let losly related civs share some attributes, closly related civs coulds sometimes share UU with some diffrences, A baylonian bowman could have a promotion that differs it from the assyrian bowman....
In that whay could you have a few regoinal civs maybe 20 (mesopetamian, slavic, east bantu, sino-tibeatan...) totally which mirrors attributes and some Uniqe stuff but letting each having a lot of flavors letting the total amount of civs ranging over a 100. Big important civs could also start as part s of them selfes, instead of starting as germany must you try to unify the german speakin kingdoms as preussia or unify india or china or brittain...
More to come
Map, Start settings, how to tame mammoths
More on Techs
international trade
culture
and more
----------------
I will edit this to be more clear later on.
Pleas comment my ideas or post links to your own threads about how you would like to have Civ VI!
Sorry for long and messy post