Mechanics Brainstorm

[Stalker0]

The idea of this thread is not to focus on problems, but a collection of solutions. The idea is to brainstorm ideas that the mod hasn't used much yet, or maybe at all. No where in this thread should we be talking about "oh we could use that for this" or "that is too hard to code" or "but X modmod already does that".

Just list out mechanics that haven't been used much yet. Perhaps one day as we are discussing ideas for a change or a new civ or XYZ, these ideas may be used again.

 

[Stalker0]

A few ideas to kick it off.

Spies give Diplomat Benefits
GPP from all cities is focused in the capital
Dismissing a unit provides healing/XP/XYZ to all neighboring units
Unit abiltiy removes vision
Permanently sell votes for X benefit

 

[pineappledan]

Unit abiltiy removes vision

Currently possible using a plague promotion

 

[Hinin]

Currently possible using a plague promotion

Vision, like movement, can't be reduced below 1 (I tried). It seriously limits the utility of such a mechanic.

 

[pineappledan]

I really want to brainstorm with people how we could manage to get up to 12 unique religions, enough to support a full 22-player game.

VP has 9 founders, 16 followers, 9 enhancers, and 9 reformation beliefs
To have enough beliefs for 12 religions in a single game, we need an additional 3 founders, 8 followers, 3 enhancers, and 3 reformation beliefs.
In my Religious overhaul design proposal, I was able to net another 6 followers, 2 enhancers, and 1 reformation, after splitting and re-combining some existing beliefs.
That means we only need to think of another 3 founders, 2 followers, 1 enhancer, and 2 reformation beliefs.

Some things I was thinking about:

• Are there some suitable instant yields triggers or mechanics for more founder beliefs in particular? Usually founder beliefs have relatively rare instant yield triggers, like era changes, city conquests, Great People births, or policy unlocking. Things that don't happen every turn, or multiple times a turn like killing a unit or a city growing.
  • Building a wonder?
  • Starting a Golden Age (is that too similar to the existing Divine Inheritance)?
  • Gaining a Citizen, but only in the Holy City, as opposed to everywhere?
• The caste system is a pretty big deal in religiously hierarchical societies. The most prevalent example is India, but it has versions in many societies. How would you gamify a caste system and implement it as a belief (probably a founder)?
• I am very interested in the idea of political Mandalas, where a society is organizes around a great city, which exerts a gravity around itself for smaller communities to see themselves in the cultural and religious orbit of. This flips our western idea of nationhood on its head, because the nation is defined by its center, rather than its borders. How could you replicate something like this as a belief?
• There aren't any Reformation beliefs that reflect non-christian reformations, but there's a few that are specifically Abrahamic (eg. Crusader Spirit and Defender of the Faith). Can you think of any reformed or reinterpreted schools of thought in non-western belief that could form the basis of a Reformation belief?
  • What about Zen? Zen is a fusion of Chinese Mahayana Buddhism and Neo-Taoism. What would a Zen reformation belief look like?
  • What about a new age spiritualism reformation, like a Wiccan or Neo-pagan reformation belief? What kind of bonuses could that give?
  • Or perhaps a reformation based on Islam? Like a Twelver reformation? Or maybe one based on Zoroastrian Mazdaki? Or Advaita Vedanta (Monotheistic Hinduism)?
• The easiest new follower beliefs are just adding more and more buildings, and I think I've done enough of that (Gurdwara, Daoguan, Dar e Mehr, Sweat Lodge). Can you think of 1 localized bonus for a follower beliefs that ISN'T a building?

 

[usadefcon1]

- Units should continue to follow movement orders even if their final destination is occupied (until the final turn of their orders)
- Retaking your own city there should be no resistance
- If one vassal revolts the others should be given the option to pick a side.
- Convert caravans to Trade Ships and vice versa with gold (like a promotion)
- Option to default all cities to Manual Specialist Control
- Units should not heal more if the nearest city is in resistance
- Are you sure you wish to declare war? pop up should happen in all war declare situations.
- Lakes should not stop blockades
- Move Defensive Pacts to Nationalism
- Remove the anti cav promotion from spearman (starts with pike)
- Chart that shows total city unhappiness based on type of unhappiness

 

[Hinin]

I am very interested in the idea of political Mandalas, where a society is organizes around a great city, which exerts a gravity around itself for smaller communities to see themselves in the cultural and religious orbit of. This flips our western idea of nationhood on its head, because the nation is defined by its center, rather than its borders. How could you replicate something like this as a belief?

I imagine that something that relies on a "religious orbit" and avoids pure integration would be relying on a very strong core pressure from the holy city, and some kind of diplomatic bonus.

Maybe something like this :
Founder - Mandala
+1 // and bonus pressure in Holy City per foreign City of your religion. Gain Influence per turn in City-States following your religion, scaling with Era. Etc

The caste system is a pretty big deal in religiously hierarchical societies. The most prevalent example is India, but it has versions in many societies. How would you gamify a caste system and implement it as a belief (probably a founder)?

Your previous idea of removing player control on population management in exchange for bonuses seemed interesting enough. The details can be discussed, but one thing that should be kept in mind is that the governor isn't at its best right now (frequent complains about illogical things it does). Another, less heavy, solution would be to put a hard limit to the number of specialists you can have in a city (with maybe progression through the eras) in exchange for bonus happiness and yields.

Can you think of any reformed or reinterpreted schools of thought in non-western belief that could form the basis of a Reformation belief?

No really reinterpreted, but integrated into other schools of thought : Mohism, a consequentialist, pacifist and logic-based current that was mainly absorbed by Confucianism. There is also how the concept of Supreme One in Bantu beliefs helped the transition to Abrahamic religions.

Can you think of 1 localized bonus for a follower beliefs that ISN'T a building?

I think that maybe something less focused on yields, and more on need reduction and resilience could be interesting.

Follower - Maison-Dieu : Reduces Distress and Poverty by a percentage, and increases City healing and HP.

Things that don't happen every turn, or multiple times a turn like killing a unit or a city growing.

• Building a wonder?
• Starting a Golden Age (is that too similar to the existing Divine Inheritance)?
• Gaining a Citizen, but only in the Holy City, as opposed to everywhere?

• Finishing a Trade Route
• Winning a War
• Gaining access to a new Resource
• Connecting or keeping connected a City
• Losing a Unit

 

[tu_79]

- Spend money to gain unit experience.
- Migration. Unhappy citizens move to the closest city that is happier.
- Option to create city states with settlers.

 

[Laz0r]

Implementing a master-vassal relationship tier in the vein of hoi4 would make vassals a lot more interesting as it would incentivize investing into vassals for added benefits.
Benefits could range from increased yield gain from the vassals, guaranteed votes on WC proposals, more unit tribute on era, additional spies from them, or the option to annex their cities peacefully. Such a system could work as a point system where certain actions such as TR's and donations of trade goods and gold could add to this sum of points thereby letting you "rank up" with your vassal, and eventually purchase cities. Loss of points would occur from taxation, religious conflict, purchasing of cities or failing to protect them


Another suggestion in much the same vain, and a more important one I might add, is making war and combat within vassal territories less of a horrible, awful experience. As it stands AI vassal units tend to only get in the way of your own units so I suggest the following:
1. give you full sight of everything their units and cities can see, maybe make it a relationship tier.
2. let you stack your units on top of theirs, disabling theirs and having both take damage upon being attacked for balancing reasons.
3. let you put your units in their cities
These changes would make it so that the awful carpet of under-teched units the AI vassals make won't get in the way of you setting up a proper defense in their cities and will completely remove the horrible juggling act of having to weave in-between units and not being able to use their roads properly due to not being able to pass through their cities. This will also make it so you don't have to conquer their cities just to war against one of their neighbors later, which is a huge issue with vassals. Such a change is a huge QOL change that will make vassal warfare a much more fun experience.

 

[SolutionIt]

I really want to brainstorm with people how we could manage to get up to 12 unique religions, enough to support a full 22-player game.

VP has 9 founders, 16 followers, 9 enhancers, and 9 reformation beliefs
To have enough beliefs for 12 religions in a single game, we need an additional 3 founders, 8 followers, 3 enhancers, and 3 reformation beliefs.
In my Religious overhaul design proposal, I was able to net another 6 followers, 2 enhancers, and 1 reformation, after splitting and re-combining some existing beliefs.
That means we only need to think of another 3 founders, 2 followers, 1 enhancer, and 2 reformation beliefs.

Some things I was thinking about:

• Are there some suitable instant yields triggers or mechanics for more founder beliefs in particular? Usually founder beliefs have relatively rare instant yield triggers, like era changes, city conquests, Great People births, or policy unlocking. Things that don't happen every turn, or multiple times a turn like killing a unit or a city growing.
  • Building a wonder?
  • Starting a Golden Age (is that too similar to the existing Divine Inheritance)?
  • Gaining a Citizen, but only in the Holy City, as opposed to everywhere?
• The caste system is a pretty big deal in religiously hierarchical societies. The most prevalent example is India, but it has versions in many societies. How would you gamify a caste system and implement it as a belief (probably a founder)?
• I am very interested in the idea of political Mandalas, where a society is organizes around a great city, which exerts a gravity around itself for smaller communities to see themselves in the cultural and religious orbit of. This flips our western idea of nationhood on its head, because the nation is defined by its center, rather than its borders. How could you replicate something like this as a belief?
• There aren't any Reformation beliefs that reflect non-christian reformations, but there's a few that are specifically Abrahamic (eg. Crusader Spirit and Defender of the Faith). Can you think of any reformed or reinterpreted schools of thought in non-western belief that could form the basis of a Reformation belief?
  • What about Zen? Zen is a fusion of Chinese Mahayana Buddhism and Neo-Taoism. What would a Zen reformation belief look like?
  • What about a new age spiritualism reformation, like a Wiccan or Neo-pagan reformation belief? What kind of bonuses could that give?
  • Or perhaps a reformation based on Islam? Like a Twelver reformation? Or maybe one based on Zoroastrian Mazdaki? Or Advaita Vedanta (Monotheistic Hinduism)?
• The easiest new follower beliefs are just adding more and more buildings, and I think I've done enough of that (Gurdwara, Daoguan, Dar e Mehr, Sweat Lodge). Can you think of 1 localized bonus for a follower beliefs that ISN'T a building?

Not necessarily giving ideas for new beliefs, but one of the things I was trying to do but kind of left in the long list of things I am editing for my own personal reasons was making Byzantium's UA apply to Fealty's policy opener and editing the functionality of that entire policy tree. I already have a UA that doesn't betray what she was about and doesn't shoehorn her into any specific playstyle as well which I'll include.

Spoiler :

New UA for Byzantium: Cities gain the pantheon effect of the Second Most Popular Religion in the city, and +1 of all yields for every religion present in the city. Religious Buildings purchased with Faith provide +3 Faith and +3 GPP depending on the Religious Building. Able to adopt an extra belief upon adopting a Religion.

This ability feels more like what Theodora was about, and also gives you a unique playstyle for religious gameplay.

Historical Relevance

- The ability rewards going wide which reflects Justinian's want to return Rome to its former glory.
- It faithfully represents how Theodora had many churches constructed during her time and housed religious groups (which I can't remember at the moment which groups they were).
- Being able to utilize the secondary pantheon belief of the second most popular belief also reflects how Theodora was not of the same religious following as Justinian.

Gameplay Relevance

- Encourages you to micromanage your cities religious affairs and creates more nuance on who to do religious warfare with in order to control the religious pressure.
- Doubles down on her ability to benefit from what effects are in a Religion.
- Still allows her to specialize into any victory type she needs to use in order to win the game.
- Although her ability to have cheaper faith purchases is effectively removed, the Tetraconch still allows her to gain very solid faith generation tall or wide and the need to purchase religious buildings will eventually allow you to build up good religious pressure and faith generation to make up for it. It also forces her to more effectively utilize the Tetraconch's bonus to the religious pressure modifier on her trade routes in cities with a Tetraconch.

Anyways moving her UA to be the opener for the Fealty Tree would allow more religions to propagate across a game, add more complexity and competition to the religious portion of the game, and allow for anyone to adopt a Religion with the beliefs they want at the cost of a Policy. I don't think this would be too powerful on paper either since you're likely to be behind on spreading your religion, and any points you're over on are converted to Golden Age Points upon getting the Great Prophet. It also becomes a case by case opener where the usefulness of it depends on how far in you are with your Religion. Examples are coming up:

- Wasn't able to adopt a Religion? Use a policy to adopt it. If your opponents are too far religiously it isn't worth it and is more in your interest to either conquer their religion or let it spread to you.
- Adopted a Religion but didn't finish up the beliefs? Now you get insurance to guarantee you set up the perfect Religion for you to utilize.
- Adopted a Religion and already adopted all the possible beliefs? You don't really get anything but it largely depends on how you re-organize/re-design the Fealty Tree. I had moved the religious pressure effect from Organized Religion to the opener to help all three points displayed here.

To sum this up, you basically allow everyone to play the religious game without having to go through the effort of making new beliefs and going through all the scrutiny of balancing them between each other. Byzantium also gets a unique playstyle that still lets her try any victory type meaningfully.

 

[SolutionIt]

- A promotion for naval units that allow them to enter land tiles that have a river in them. Or rather add the fort and citadel functionality that allows naval units to enter them to tiles with rivers. Could even be a good excuse to add a new building similar to the lighthouse but for rivers.
- Recon Naval Units. Submarines feel like the closest thing to it right now, but it feels entirely too awkward knowing the Caravel was an exploration vessel but has the role of a Melee Naval Unit by design.
- New Tile Types to make the oceans not just one giant plain field with no obstructions to vision or bonuses to defense. I.e. Storm Tile that cuts movement or a Tailwind tile that improves movement. Reef Tiles for Coastal Tiles that limit movement.
- Atolls count as a land tile land units can embark onto but an ocean tile naval units can pass through. Definitely likely to cause a problem with unit stacking rules though.
- Removing ocean minefields as a building and making it an improvement created by work boats. There is a disturbing lack of potential when it comes to creating improvements on coastal and ocean tiles.
- Reworking recon units combat emphasis. I think it would be really nice if they were genuinely weak but were the only ones capable of stacking on top of other land units and had more bonuses tied to it. Little bit of a stretch though.

Can't think of any other ideas but I'll post some more ideas if they come to me.

 

[Dimmy]

An assassin unit that can sacrifice itself to kill a great person or heavily damage an unit. And / or pillage a fort / fortress. Can be multiple units as well, each one achieving of these actions.
Would use paper ressources maybe?

 

[skitter]

-- Healing units costs food from the nearest city (as you're recruiting people to join the army)
-- Negative sides to different culture policies; for example, taking a policy that is very strong early on, but has accumulating negatives in later eras
-- Trading individual hexes in peace treaties. Alternatively, add X hexes in the peace treaty and you gain X random hexes (if there is a common border).
-- En masse emigration/repopulation - moving cities to a territory you own or unpopulated area for some X cost. See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_Period, or the Balkans post WWII, or USSR.
-- Tax rates - can be increased/decreased for happiness/gold income/growth.

Idea for religious beliefs, especially if you want to implement the full 22 religions as discussed above.
Even now, it is quite overwhelming to read the description of ALL beliefs and make an informed judgement. This is going to be way worse if you have 22 possible founder and 44 followers. So perhaps reduce the choice - allow the player (and AI) to see only six of each. Possibly displayed like the advisors grid for better UX.
This would allow some strategizing without being overwhelming, and would introduce some variation that makes snowballing civs weaker, as they can't always pick the strongest belief.

There are some fundamental forces in human society that are not reflected at all in the game
-- Corruption
-- Loyalty to the national idea or ethnic group (as we saw in Afghanistan, this can easily make or break a country). Different in every city?
-- Plagues (Black death)
-- Drug epidemics and substance abuse (during the Opium Wars, it is said that one in five Chinese villagers was addicted to opium; a Bulgarian khan decreed that all grape plants be rooted out and burned due to rampant alcoholism).

Though I'm not sure how these can be implemented elegantly

 

[Legen]

-- Unit gaining the Morale promotion automatically upon reaching a certain level or upon obtaining a tier 4 promotion (e.g. March, Blitz, Range, Logistics).

There aren't any Reformation beliefs that reflect non-christian reformations, but there's a few that are specifically Abrahamic (eg. Crusader Spirit and Defender of the Faith). Can you think of any reformed or reinterpreted schools of thought in non-western belief that could form the basis of a Reformation belief?

We don't have a proper syncretism-like Founder and Reformation beliefs. I think you could use the Shinbutsu-shugo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinbutsu-shūgō) event as an example, as the name itself refers to syncretism between two deities types (kami and buddha). An example of what it could do to mirror its history, maybe allow you to purchase faith buildings from the religions with at least one follower in the city, plus some non-tourism buff to faith buildings.

 

[skitter]

more ideas about culture/science mechanics

-- 'free research' - X% faster, but you don't know towards which tech you're working, or maybe research is randomly spread across all possible techs to research. I think this more closely resembles what we see in real life. It doesn't have to be a huge % either.

-- variable costs of technologies on the same level - use this to either be more historically accurate, or as an additional tool to balance the game where necessary.

-- more technologies/policies that grant a one time boost

-- non-mandatory techs or upgrades of existing techs.
- How it works in real life: you can direct your scientists to work on iterating and improving upon a certain technology, OR you can fund fundamental science or work towards the next big thing

E.g. the chinese UU, Cho-Ko-Nu, is a crossbow replacement. In theory, any civ could have created improved crossbows, so we can add a technology next to Machinery, which is not mandatory, and which unlocks the Chu-Ko-Nu (or a nerfed version of them).

China has this tech for free, for everyone else it's either more expensive than a normal tech, or grants only inferior version of the unique unit.
This technology would be non-mandatory - unlike machinery, it's not a required prerequisite for anything. You need to decide whether it's worth the time to sink science into that, for example if you're waging war, or if you want to skip it and go for upgraded tanks later on instead.
Upon advancing in the next era, all such technology detours are locked.

Other example ideas for non-mandatory techs would be:

• Construction 2 - having access to marble provides +1 culture for all world wonders.
• Economics 2 - adds 5% bonus for gold from city connections
• Steel 2 - your Swordsmen and Longswordsmen gain +5 hp and +1 CS, unlocks Legionnaire

-- same for non-mandatory policies or upgrades of existing policies.
A culture tree is opener + 5 policies - but it can easily be opener + 5 mandatory policies + 10 minor, optional improvements.

I am well aware that the two suggestions above would be very hard to implement. It's just cool to think about.

-- Events that negatively affect your culture. E.g. if someone achieves 'influential' status over you, it disables the benefits from 1-2-3 random policies you've chosen. You know how enemy leaders say your culture has swept away their customs? That.

 

[Stalker0]

• Provide a specific policy or tenant as a Civ ability.
• When using a diplo unit for influence, a popup comes up where you can invest gold for more influence.
• Adjust the faith buying cost of GP
• +1 WC vote for every type of CS (maritime, cultural, etc) you are allied with.
• Tactical Nuke - Weaker version of nuclear missile that does not spread fallout, just does big damage.
• Let missile cruisers and nuclear subs auto create missiles every X turns.
• Missile Silo - Building, auto generates a missile every X turns for free.
• Benefit based on every X public works
• Public works becomes main form of happiness, all other sources weakened public works strengthened.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

- New Tile Types to make the oceans not just one giant plain field with no obstructions to vision or bonuses to defense. I.e. Storm Tile that cuts movement or a Tailwind tile that improves movement. Reef Tiles for Coastal Tiles that limit movement.

Currently playing Humankind and there is something like "rough ocean" which blocks sight and cost 2 points in movement. There are riffs too, which end the turn for any ship immediately, if they enter that tile.
Nothing big, but at least some difference in ocean tiles.

- Removing ocean minefields as a building and making it an improvement created by work boats. There is a disturbing lack of potential when it comes to creating improvements on coastal and ocean tiles.

Interesting idea. Fishing boats are extremely cheap later on, they could be sacrificed to create a minefield, which raise the movement cost of a tile for enemies by 1 and harm 5hp for units ending their turn there. Also nothing big but alteast it enters some kind of complexity to an otherwise relatively plain territory.

 

[Bromar1]

- Units should continue to follow movement orders even if their final destination is occupied (until the final turn of their orders)

+1 This would be an enormous QoL enhancement

 

[SolutionIt]

Currently playing Humankind and there is something like "rough ocean" which blocks sight and cost 2 points in movement. There are riffs too, which end the turn for any ship immediately, if they enter that tile.
Nothing big, but at least some difference in ocean tiles.

Interesting idea. Fishing boats are extremely cheap later on, they could be sacrificed to create a minefield, which raise the movement cost of a tile for enemies by 1 and harm 5hp for units ending their turn there. Also nothing big but alteast it enters some kind of complexity to an otherwise relatively plain territory.

Yeah I keep seeing a lot of talk about Humankind coming up on youtube. Not sure if I'd be interested though cause I'm too dedicated to Civ 5 VP and flexing any creative muscles I currently have to the best of my ability.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

Yeah I keep seeing a lot of talk about Humankind coming up on youtube. Not sure if I'd be interested though cause I'm too dedicated to Civ 5 VP and flexing any creative muscles I currently have to the best of my ability.

I have to say, Humankind is more polished at its start than Civ5 and far far more than Civ6 when they started. The tactical AI is also very good, I have fought not one fight, where the AI makes very dump mistakes. Only the general AI seems a bit weak, but it might have to do with the lower difficulty level I have chosen to learn the game better. There are a lot of interesting ideas, which might be also interesting ideas to implement to VP.

By the way, I don't think any brainstorming for new ideas will be useful, cause it was often said, no new mechanics will be implemented cause of the already close to final status.