Yeah sorry, ironically I am actually not good at 4X games
I’m just dragged in by my mild interest of history
And most of my game concepts are Overambitious
Overambitious is not a bad start - it's much easier to scale back than to try to ramp up from a slow beginning.
Meanwhile, about the use of Regions or Territories either like
Humankind or a variation thereof.
When I first encountered this concept in
Endless Legend, I thought it was a neat solution to the 'collection of separate cities' that too many Civ VI games turn out to be. Plus, that was a Fantasy Game so I wasn't worried about equating it to any kind of 'real life' development.
Then I saw it and in the OpenDev got a chance to play with it in
Humankind, and it grated on me: artificial boundaries for territories on top of artificial Eras and artificial developments of Civs that have no relationship to each other in a supposedly-historical 4X game. Aaaargh!
But, having looked at it more and thought about the very real problems of individual City Placement Civ-style that it does solve, I'm no longer completely against it.
But, to make Regions work in a Historical 4X game, there are going to be two requirements:
1. The development team will have to have input from a Population Geographer (I'd offer my sister, who has a PhD in the field, but she's retired) to make sure the regional boundaries Make Sense. For instance, rivers are not population boundaries - people live on both sides of the river and use it as a highway to move back and forth and, especially, up and down the river with goods and people. That means that rivers will usually flow through regions, not at the edge of them.
Until they become Political Borders, which are almost always drawn along the river, because it's so convenient - but the border still leaves people living on both sides of the river. A good historical example of this is the Classical Rhine, which was the border of the Roman Empire, heavily fortified and patrolled by the Legions. But there were Germans living on both sides of the river, and a great deal of Roman presence across the river in Germany, so that by the 5th century CE the German settlement at what is now Wiesbaden - several miles on the 'other side' of the river, was incorporated as a Roman City!
That means that Regional boundaries cannot be Hard Wired. The original, pre-urban settlement boundaries may change when they become Political boundaries, and as the settlement pattern changes - much more slowly and in response to many other non-political factors - boundaries may also change.
The mathematical models for population spread and placement, by the way, are pretty complete and precise, which is why I said the game development team should just hire a Population Geographer: based on both the artificial and natural geography (mountains, rivers, roads and infrastructure) they can predict pretty precisely where population is going to spread and cluster, and therefore where the 'natural' boundaries of population Regions will fall - my sister made a very good living doing just that for decades, predicting population shifts for local and regional governments and institutions.
2. As part of that, the 'culture bomb' of Civ VI will still have a place in a regional system: changes in culture, settlement, religion, population in general will change the boundaries. So, instead of 'attaching' one region to another and having a city spread out over two regions, as
Humankind seems to do, the boundary of the region the city is in should 'bomb' to include Districts of the city as they spread outside the original region. This might mean that a region/city expands by the endgame to include all of an adjacent region or the mechanism might be that the city develops 'suburbs' in the second (or third, etc) regions.
New York City is a good example: Manhatten Island is an obvious separate region, where the city started, but now the city has boroughs or suburbs on both sides of the Hudson and East Rivers, Long Island, Connecticut and New Jersey. It's all effectively the New York City megalopolis, but extends over several different political/regional boundaries.
Done right, a regional system would solve many of the aesthetic and Empire problems in the Civ games: borders being totally wrapped around individual cities, cities separated by 'foreign' territory and 'empires' that resemble nothing ever displayed on any historical map. But the system has to reflect the reality of how people spread over the landscape, which is what defines regions in real life.
Finally, when it comes to founding Cities, I think it's time for the Settler-Only system to go. It's been around for nigh on 29 years now in the Civ franchise, but it's too limited. My understanding is that
Humankind allows most cities to be founded either all at once or as Outposts to grow into cities later, and all done by any ordinary military unit. I suspect (not having seen their final system yet) that might be a little too Unlimited, but the idea of a fort, settlement, hamlet, outpost, trading post, or some other tiny collection of people eventually growing into a city is far closer to the historical 'norm' than plunking down a mass of 100s or 1000s of settlers all in one mass unit for Instant City.
A system in which, perhaps, any military unit could start a fort or outpost as a 'seed' for a city, which would attract population based on how many resources are nearby to be exploited - resources in this case including good farmland (high yield Food tiles) or, early on, fishing and hunting (forest, river, and shoreline) would be more 'organic' and historically accurate. It would also be more accurate that the settlement, if on the border or outer edge of the Civ, would attract population from the Outside, including other Civs, rsulting in a Mixed Po[ulation city which could bring problems later on if the stqbility or loyalty of the Civ falters.
