My civilization 6 design document (long read)

[Ikael]

So the day has finally com! Here there are every single idea that I thought for a future Civilization 6. It is extensive, it is long, and it is yet to be finished, but I hope that you guys will find it at least a little bit interesting, and that some of our collective brainstorming would perhaps serve for inspiration for future entries

Needless to say, the basic familiar template will be here: hexes, tile improvement, tech tree yadda, yadda. But as always, the devil is in the dettails. And now, let me guide you into said dettails...


LIMITING WIDE EXPANSION: CULTURAL IDENTITY RADIOUS

"To be idle requires a strong sense of personal identity" - Robert Louis Stevenson


- The further a city is located from your capital, the more it looses its cultural identity, in a similar fashion of how the corruption system worked back in the day

- However, the loss of cultural identity would just consist in a penalty to the city's culture and science output , leaving gold and hammer output unscratched

- That would replicate the whole "Metropolis VS colony" historic mechanic. Scientific discoveries and cultural archievements will come from the metropolis, while colonies will be used as tools to project power (producing and healing units) and gain wealth as you control access to chokepoints vital for trade routes and the world's commerce

- That way, wide empires wouldn't have a so much steep technological advantage over tall ones, forcing big empires to have their own house (core) in order before starting expanding and colonizing, and preventing the creation of "runaway civs" since at some point wide expansion won't translate into bigger scientific and cultural output

- Such mechanic would also mean that the whole "vital space" of your civ will ring truer than before: having a nearby rival city next to your homeland will mean war since that is a spot where a city of yours could be more productive (that is, bigger science and culture output), thus making civilization rivalries far more organic: you are bound to wage war against your neighbors not because there's a "sharing borders" diplomatic modifier, but rather because of the fact that the disputed border near your core, now occupied by a pesky rival city, will be a far better place for developing your empire than a far away island

- That would also mean that tile adquisition in oversea territories will require gold, since culture production would amount to nil in the colonies. That lack of culture output will leave said colonies heavily vulnerable to cultural assimilation by the native civs of said continent (since these pesky colonies that for you are in a remote continent, for these native civiliztions would be their backyard), which could create really interesting scenarios of assimilation, revolts and independence movements


GOVERNANCE, LIMITING ICS

“The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.” ― Robert A. Heinlein

-Think of governance as a more clear city manteinance system a la Civ 5. The higher the governance number, the higher number of cities you can have without manteinance costs. Say, if your governance level is 3 but you have 5 cities under your control, you would pay manteinance costs for 2 cities only

- Each type of goverment has a different capability for governance. Say, a dictatorship might be useful for the very early game (or a very besiegued empire), but its limited governance levels makes it unsuitable for extensive, more developed empires

- Manteinance costs per city outside your governance limit scales up with each era

- Governance capacity scales up or down depending on map size in order to retain the gameplay balance

- Events such as riots and protests decreases the governance level of your goverment. So if you have a big empire, keep it happy!

- If your governance level reaches zero, a revolution will take place

- You can "reset" your governance levels by changing goverments, building certain buildings or wonders or via old fashioned revolutions

- In conclussion, the bigger your empire is, the more important is to keep your popullation happy, and your empire governable. And conversely, if you want to instill unstability into an empire, you should aim to induce riots and revolts on it!

Ruling occuppied cities

- Will suffer from a "resistance" period as usual
- Will suffer an additional happiness penalty and will provide for an additional governance penalty for your empire, unless you build a courthouse in them
- Occupied cities of long-passed civilizations have a chance to rebel and try to declare independence if your civilization goes trought an anarchy period. That includes occupied cities with courthouses on them, so beware of revolutions!
- Occupied cities of still alive civilizations have a chance to rebel and form liberation guerrillas if your civilization goes trought an anarchy period
- Occupied cities with some of your cultural traits present on them will have a lesser chance to revolt and trying to get independent during revolutions
- Occupied cities with all your cultural traits present on them will outright stop being considered "occuppied cities" altogether: their culural assimilation has been completed

LIMITING VERTICAL EXPANSION: HAPPINESS SYSTEM

"Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length" - Robert Frost

- Happiness is getting back to its old individual city status.

- Excess of happiness however, will be pooled in order to reach golden ages. This means that wide gameplay will reward the cultural game, since having lots of small appy cities will mean lots of golden ages for your empire!

- Unhappiness is, whoever, a very risky business. Unhappiness penalizes your city with a -20% growth, defense and production bonus. Even being at just -1 unhappiness will make your cities lag

- Unhappiness is cummulative too: Think of a "negative golden age". While you can indeed ignore unhappiness for a while (because let's face it, it is not that much of a penalty), ignoring it for too much time will cause a crysis in the city. Think of crysis as a "negative golde age" caused by the accumulation of unhappiness over a long period of time

- Crysis could be protests, riots, or even independence movement if you happen to have colonies too far from your capital or foreign enemy cities under your control

- Every single crysis will decrease your governance level, which means that bigger empires will also have to pay special attention to happiness, while smaller empires will be far more stable entities

MANPOWER MECHANICS

"You cannot do everything at once" - Spanish proverb

Manpower: Manpower determines the amount of able popullation within your empire. As such, manpower is determined by the amount of popullation under your empire: you will recieve 1 manpower point for each citizen. In addition to that, foreign cities that have adopted your lifestyle will provide you with a steady supply of manpower due to inmigration (1 per city with your lifestyle, plus an additional 1 per 10 pop). Also, your Palace will generate extra manpower points depending of the difficulty level in order to help you with the early game. Needless to say, certain goverments and wonders will provide you bonuses to your manpower generation and comsuption. Some might even grant you additional bonuses for your manpower surplus!

Manpower will be consumed by armies, cities, worker units, and merchant buildings, forcing you to choose between expansion (settlers & cities), development (workers), defense (soldiers) or trade (artisans and merchant buildings). Certain special units, such as great people or slaves consumes no manpower.

Excess of manpower will be used to generate science (note how this will be the only non-situational science generator due to the cultural radious mechanics) and it will help you to gain golden eras, a la Civilization's V excess of happiness: citizens which are not working at the army, industry or tending the fields are instead doing awesome things with their lives and thus, helping your civilization to reach a golden age. That means that you can have a hefty dose of golden eras and science as long as your empire is both populous (meaning that it has a lot of manpower to expend) and peaceful as well (few manpower to consume) regardless of its ability to be wide or tall.

NATIONALISM, GOVERNANCE, EMANCIPATION AND THE DAWN OF EMPIRES: THE ANTI SNOWBALLING MECHANISM

- The governance costs for occuppied cities and cities with foreign cultral traits present on them will increase by 1 for each foreign civilization that has discovered the "nationalism" technology. And no, courthouses doesn't solve this long-term problem

- Several World Congress resolutions can impose heavy penalties for mantaining occupied cities (taxes, unappiness bonus, you name them)

- The advance of technology and social policies will make it easier for spies to induce riots and revolts inside enemy civilizations. Governance levels of rival civilizations will be easier to stroke down and dilute as the game advances

- Consequently, bigger empires will have a harder time at holding their old vast empires in the modern era: granting independence for your colonies and annexed territories might be a more viable option as the time passes by, in order to retain stability

- This will heavily lessen the tendency for runaway civs to appear, and it will make for a more exciting, unpredictable end game as new nations and players join the fray and old unstable empires crumble, giving birth to new superpowers

- This will also dramatically increase the importance of extending and foistering your own culture, as means to integrate previously rebel provinces and avoiding separatist movements. The balance between multiculturalism VS cultural identity will be a very fine line for you to walk in. A good cultural policy will allow you to retain your hard-earned conquests in the modern era

- Granting independence to a part of your empire will take some time, it is not an instantaneous event, so plan it well in advance. The bigger the number of cities to get this emancipation, the longer will take the process

- Granting independence to a part of your empire peacefully rather than waiting for an open revolt to happen has some advantages for your empire: you will gain a freshly minted new ally, and in some cases it may lead to a chain-reaction of independence-seeking nations that will weaken your rivals as well, due to the cultural identity radious effect acting in cascade. Imagine a far away land colonized by many world powers. None of the cities in this new continent generates culture, for each superpower capital is far away from their colonies. Now imagine that you grant independence to one -just one- city in this new world: you will shuddenly find yourself that this is the sole cultural center in this remote island, influencing and nearby cities of foreign empires and making them want to join this newly born nation.

- Violent break ups or foreing-induced independentist movements, however, will leave you with a newborn rival nation that hates your guts and that in some cases, they might be born with an alliance with your enemy civilizations included in their welcome package, as well as some instantaneously generated military units (no way to weasel out by allowing a full rebellion of easy to reconquer and not-militarized cities)

- Consequently, this will allow for a far more war-mongerish and tense endgame: say hello to gerrillas, new nations, independence movements and proxy-wars!

EXPANDING AND EXPLORING

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” ― André Gide

- Settlers will be built on a traditional fashion, employing both food and production in their construction. However, once you see one good spot for settling a city, they will take 4 turns until the city is actually built. This makes land grabbing process a little tad more difficult, and will give your rival civilizations a time window to demand you to cease and desist your expansion inside what they consider to be their natural territory, a situation that will lead to a tense early game

- Your starting unit won't be a settler, but rather a tribe .This special, one of a kind type of unit has one more additional movement and sight radious than the regular settler as well as a "scout" promotion, and it will build your first city instantaneously with walls already built on it. Your capital placement will be a vital question, and thus, you will be given enough flexiblity for picking the right spot

- Yes, natural wonders are back! And most of them will provide both local and empire-wide bonuses

- Map generators will have a tendency to place late game strategic and luxury resources clustered in isolated islands, thus incentivating the player for going into a second wave of expansion once he discovers navigation. Ditto for natural wonders


NEW WONDERS MECHANIC

"Numberless are the world's wonders, but none More wonderful than man." - Sophocles

- As a general rule, you can only have two wonders active per city, albeit there will be exceptions to that rule due to civilization traits, culture, goverments, and certain wonders which does not get obsolete with the time such as the Pyramids

- Wonders will never get obsolete unless you exceed the number of maximum active wonders per city. Once you build your third wonder in the same city and onwards, you will be asked to phase out one previous wonder of your choosing

- Once said wonder gets obsolete, you will loose its bonus, but it will start enerating culture instead, for it would have become a national symbol and part of its cultural heritage rather than a utiliarian building (Example: The Colossus. +1 additional trade route, +5 culture if obsolete).

- Wonders production will recieve far more power situational bonuses than on previous entries (ej: +50% production towards the great wall if there's stone present on the city radious, +25% production towards the Hagia Sophia for each different religion present on the city, and so on). This will allow you to better spread wonders, and to pick carefully where do you build your cities!

- By pairing two different active wonders, your city will gain a title or "bonus", a la BNW theming bonuses. For example: Eiffer Tower + Louvre museum: City becomes "city of lights": +6 happiness on this city

-

All othese tweaks will have several gameplay implications:

- You will be pressed to make hard choices, deciding not only which wonders you want to build but also choosing where to build them will be crucial

- You will be forced to specialize cities more than ever thanks to the wonder theming bonuses

- Wonder hoarding will be useful for cultural gameplay, but not as powerful as it was before

- You will be able to spread out your wonders better

- Wide empires will have a decidedly different flavour than tall empires, each one offering different advantages (wonder bonuses VS heritage culture production and theming bonuses)

FINAL CONCLUSSION: TALL VS WIDE. A CIV FOR EVERY TYPE OF PLAYER

- Tall empires will excell at science (due to cultural identity radious mechanics), will be quite stable (low governance requirements), and will be quite able at diplomacy, but it will be difficult for them to gaing golden ages (happiness new mechanics) and thus, expanding their culture, not to mention that it will be a pain to control trade routes too (more on that latter). Tall empires will force you to heavily specialize your cities and to plan in the long term, having a focused strategy and adhering to it due to the new wonder theming bonuses mechanics.

- Wide empires will be great for culture generation thanks to the new happiness mechanics united to the cultural radious mechanics as well (fixed culture generation per building with no increased cost for acquiring cultural traits means the more cities the merrier), they will be great at fighting wars as always, and they will be good for setting up trade hubs and defending them. Wide empires will be, however, fraught with conflict due to their size, quite unstable (governance mechanic), and if you don't pay attention to your core cities, it won't be as good on science as tall empires. Wide empires will demand a very dynamic type of gameplay apt at improvisation, with cities be far more versatile than the ones of tall empires and an increased array of wonder benefits to support changing your strategies.

- The idea for proposed version of Civilization is to offer several viable different styles of gameplay, satisfying every civ fan and newcomers to the saga alike and keeping a distinct flavour to every different strategy possible!

Coming soon, dettails on:

- Warfare
- Cultural mechanics
- Tech system
- Goverments
- Trade routes
- Diplomatic system
- Primary and secondary resources

Stay tuned!

 

[Ikael]

TRADE ROUTE MECHANICS

General overview: Trade route yields

- No distinction between foreign and internal trade routes. Almost every trade route will yield gold, food and production, both internal and international trade routes. Gold will be calculated in the same manner as nowadays, only that international trade routes will generate twice the amount of gold than domestic ones. Food and production generated by trade routes will depend on how many tiles the destination city is working: you will obtain +1 food per worked tile that generates 3 or more food, and +1 production for each worked tile that generates 3 or more production in the desination city

- This will allow for an even further city specialization, with communication between breadbaskets and industrial centers playing a key role in designing your civs

-No distinction between sea and land trade routes either. You can make a trade route that originates from one inland city "embark" in a different coastatal city and arrive in a far away land, if you have all the techs required for this

- The only difference between trade routes will be regular VS aerial, with these only available once you research flight

- You can modify trade routes whenever you want from the "trade" window or from the city view, but there will be a "cooling down" period between changes in order to avoid constant-flip-flopping trade routes

Variable radious and distance calculous: the importance of terrain

As opposed to Civ V, Civ VI trade routes won't have a fixed hex number radious. They will rather be calculated by a "move radious" type of system. Think of trade units as an actual regular unit but with a huge movement number (let's say, 10 movements) that has to "arrive" to its desired destination in one turn only, so to speak: enter the trade radious. Trade radious follow a certain set of rules.

Trade route and terrain:

- Trade routes can only go trought sea, lake, roads, railoads or riverside tiles. Land trade routes will require of roads and / or rivers in order to be carried out. Thus, the creation of roads will be an organic need

- Trade routes can't go trought tundra, marsh, jungle, mountains or desert tiles, even if said tiles do have roads placed on them. They will act like natural barriers against trade routes that they have historically been. You will be only be able to overcome these land obstacles with the advent of railoads, trought certain civilization's UAs or due to aerial trade routes

- Sea, riverside and raiload trade routes consumes just 1/2 of a trade route movement points, acting like natural commerce channels

- Trade routes will be able to "embark" and go from one coastatal city into another one, startinng from one inland city and finishing into another coastatal one in a different landmass

- Trade routes can only cross ocean tiles if they embark or originate from a coastatal city with a seaport built in them (requires Navigation technology)

- The only trade routes without any kind of terrain limitation are aerial trade routes. Due to that powerful trait, they are limited to one per civilization, and you will need to build an airport both cities in order to connect them by aerial trade routes

- The trade route base movement will be defined by certain technologies and buildings

Traversing cities with trade routes

- Trade units will need to traverse coastatal cities in order to "embark" and being able to cross oceans. Same thing goes for riverside cities and their awesome riverside tile lessened costs. Ports and access to seas will be of utter importance

- Traversing cities with special trade buildings inside them such as caravansarais or seaports will confer extra movement points for your trade routes and extend their radious far beyond their initial reach

- Keep in mind, however, that you can only traverse one city per trade route in order to avoid city spamming and "inifinite reach" type of trade routes. This will also mean that there will be a fierce competition in order to control of chokepoints and entries into foreign markets, as well as disincentives for building roads that go "around" cities

- Cities traversed by foreign trade routes will become trading hubs, and will be marked on the map as such. Trading hubs will receive several bonuses that will make them able to generate far more gold, food and production than regular cities (+10% of food, production and gold per foreign trade route that traverse them, double health regeneration for nearby friendly units) thus making them incredibly valuable assets for the empires that controls them


This system would have huge implications for both designing trade routes and placing cities:


- Building roads between cities (and even with foreign cities) will be a very organic need, for it will allow for your trade units to reach even further lenghts

- City spamming will be organically disencouraged as well, for it will lead to a not-so-optimal utilization of the trade route traversing mechanic (cities acting as roadblocks rather than facilitators of commerce)

- City positioning in strategic chokepoints (straights, valleys between mountains, rivers, etc) will outweight other traditional city-placing considerations like nearby inmediate resources and tile yields since the trade hub status will confer far greater bonuses. You will be able to build your Petras, Constantinoples and Singapores!

- Accessibility, transport networks and geography will mightily affect trade routes, as so will the introduction of new technologies, infrastructure and the founding of new cities and colonies. Changes on these will make some trade hubs flourish while another ones will get obsolete. You will also want to, ahem, "pay a visit" to rival trade hubs: funding colonies in order to snatch gateways and suplanting commercial nexus from other civs, or building roads in foreign territory that disrupt commerce will cause major diplomatic penalties and might be reason enough to start a war

- Open borders, embargos and blockades will severly limit your trade routes and create chain reactions that will affect farway civilizations. Butterfly effect will be in full force due to commerce!

- Controlling critical trade hubs will confer a major and decisive strategic advantage over other civilizations, not to mention that they will be necessary in order to grant yourself a commercial victory. Wars a la British Empire will be waged for sure!

 

[Sorinth]

I really like the degraded science/culture based on distance to Capitol. It's simple and way better than the current science/culture penalties associated with extra cities.

For your Governance/City Maintenance it looks like it's basically a return to Civ 4 gold cost. Maybe I'm the only one but I much prefer the global happiness as a way to limit ICS. Civ 5's happiness system is what allowed Tall to compete with Wide, I just don't see Tall competing in your version of Civ 6. It will always be better to go Wide. Yes the cultural radius will prevent the Wide empire from just blowing past the Tall empire, but I don't see anything that limits a Wide empire's core cities from being just as Tall as a Tall empires, so even if those extra cities from a wide empire are only producing 20% of their normal science, it's still better than 0 for the Tall.

You need some kind of a mechanic that limits how tall cities can grow when going Wide.


I'm loving the settlers take X turns to found the city. Though if you see someone building a city on the edge of your border can you buy up the tiles, or start founding your own city right next to it?

 

[Ikael]

Thank you for your opinion, Sorinth!

The idea behind the manpower mechanics is precisely to make tall a viable option against wide: Since every city will consume a certain fixed amount of manpower (a la Civ 5 happiness mechanic), and since you need a lot of manpower to mantain worker units, wide empires will almost always be running in short supply of manpower in general. And keep in mind that the cultural radious is not unlimited: at a certain distance from your capital, cities will produce no science and culture at all. Science and culture production will be limited to a very compact and hotly contested area.

In addition to this, manpower surplus will give you a science bonus, and the old "popullation = science" mechanic will still be in place, so that would mean that wide empires will be at a double disvantage when trying to compete with tall empires at the science race.

As for cities taking several turns in order to be build, the idea is that you should be patrolling whatever space you consider "yours" in order to be able to spot enemy settlers and demand that they cease and desist. Buying up tiles or trying to block settlers will be considered hostile movements by other civs (hey, according to them it is their natural expansion terrain, not yours!).