HWP2001
Chieftain
- Joined
- May 23, 2020
- Messages
- 11
New-ish to this site, wanted to write down my jumbled ideas for a future civ game and hear other people's thoughts. Thanks for reading!
Ages and Strategic Resources:
In order to clear up the confusion regarding the names of eras (e.g. "Renaissance" and "Modern" making no sense), I think that Civ 7 should revamp this system. My suggestion is the idea of "Ages", which represent general eras of technology without reference to real life Western-centric history. The Ages are separated based on the discovery of new strategic resources which, like in Gathering Storm, can now be stockpiled for future use as they are now far more important:
Government systems and politicians:
Instead of Civ 6 where government systems are purely superficial, my ideal Civ 7 would make them a core function of the game. In the Stone Age, every civ is simply titled a 'chiefdom'. However, upon unlocking the relevant Bronze Age civic, civilizations may choose one of four governmental systems: autocracy, monarchy, republic, or democracy. These all represent a 'tree' - as the game progresses, players can continue down the tree they began on, replacing their government system with more modern ones:
Autocracy -> Despotic Autocracy -> Imperial Autocracy -> Fascist Autocracy
Monarchy -> Feudal Monarchy -> Constitutional Monarchy -> Parliamentary Monarchy
Republic -> Merchant Republic -> Classical Republic -> Capitalist Republic
Democracy -> Direct Democracy -> Worker Democracy -> Digital Democracy
Civs play through the Stone Age with a default leader (e.g. George Washington for America or William the Conqueror for England), but upon choosing a government system can gain access to that civilization's pool of politicians, unlocked progressively by civics (e.g. Thomas Jefferson in the Bronze Age, Abraham Lincoln in the Gunpowder Age, George W. Bush in the Silicon Age, etc.) and each possessing a unique trait. Traits can be focused towards science, military, culture, gold, production, food/housing/happiness, etc. Since a civ can only have one leader, other politicians may be selected as Governors, each representing a different city. Whilst Governors' traits only apply to their city, the leader's traits apply to the entire civ, making careful selection of politicians highly important. A Governor can only be appointed to a city if a Governor's Estate has been constructed, and the limit as to how many Estates can be built in one civ increases with each tier of government (e.g. a monarchy can build 2 estates, but a feudal monarchy can build 4 and a parliamentary monarchy can build 8).
When selecting a new leader or governor (as they can die of old age or even be assassinated), autocratic civs may appoint any successor at will, without an election. However, autocratic civs suffer a significant happiness penalty to all cities. Monarchical civs may appoint a successive leader at will, but governors are elected by the population, which can often disrupt a player's long-term plans, but at the benefit of a reduced happiness penalty. Republics have elections for both governors and their leader, with a small happiness benefit to compensate. Democracies do not have leaders, instead being led by a council of their elected governors, but with a major happiness boost to counter the lack of a leader's civ-wide trait. Players must therefore choose between having the freedom to appoint politicians and having high happiness, as either could outweigh the other in certain circumstances. Once a player has started a tree they can switch to other trees (provided they have unlocked the necessary civics), albeit with a penalty. Moving 'downwards' (e.g. autocracy to republic) causes a period of anarchy in which the player's cities have zero production and growth. Moving the other direction causes multiple rebellions to occur - the more drastic the shift, the more severe the penalty. Each civ and its current leader is given a title based on their government system (e.g. Emperor Washington of the Autocracy of America, Queen Victoria of the Kingdom of England, President Caesar of the Roman Republic, etc).
The new cultural victory is inspired by the way culture and ideology interfaced in Civ 5 - i.e. civs with different government systems cause cultural pressure on each other, and culturally submissive civs suffer increased unrest as a result. This idea is expanded so that a cultural victory requires converting every other civ in the world to your government tree (autocracy, monarchy, republic, or democracy) by becoming culturally dominant over them and thus causing massive unhappiness until they convert. However, this restricts the number of culture-focused players in a game to just 4 - the players who first found each ideology.
Happiness:
The happiness system is a blend of Civ 5's happiness system and Civ 6's amenities system. Happiness is represented by a number between -100 and +100 and is localised to each city. It is highly important to maintain as this number represents the percentage boost to the output of a city - i.e. a city at +100 happiness will produce double hammers/gold/science/etc, whilst a city at -50 happiness will have its output halved. Below -50 happiness, a city will experience occasional riots/anarchy which prevents production and growth for several turns. Below -75 happiness, rebellions will occur. Happiness is determined by a large number of factors, including government system, food surplus, housing, access to luxuries, war weariness, leader/minister traits, and others. This system solves the Civ 5 problem of random cities revolting due to slight over-expansions, whilst preventing Civ 6-style snowballing where there is no penalty to settling/conquering new cities.
Macro-tiles and micro-tiles:
A new feature introduced to solve problems regarding cities and units-per-tile is the system of macro and micro hex tiles, as seen here: https://preview.redd.it/rv3fomawbk7...bp&s=d686f44475996ed120af9355100791aa8fdc659a. Each group of 7 micro-tiles is joined together to create one large macro-tile, for the purposes outlined in the next couple sections. Whilst features such as rivers/forests/bonus resources can be different within a macro-tile, the general terrain of each hex within one is the same (i.e. either all land, all sea, all coast, all mountain, etc).
Land combat:
In a complete shift away from Stacks of Doom and 1-unit-per-tile, my ideal combat system is inspired by games such as Total War and Call to Power 2. Units are grouped together into Armies, similar to TW, which take up an entire macro-tile. However, there is still a limit of 1 unit per each micro-tile within an army, which means that the maximum size of an Army is 7 units. Furthermore, in the style of CTP2, it is largely the unit composition and placement within an Army which determines its strength. Land units are divided into 5 categories:
A battle occurs when an Army is moved to attack an opposing Army. All 7 units move as one cohesive unit that is constrained to moving between macro-tiles. Battle takes place over multiple turns, giving each player the choice to change strategies before all of their units are dead. The defending Army has the choice of either also attacking (leading to an even battle), retreating (which deals a limited amount of damage), or fortifying (which minimises losses but also deals minimal damage to the attacker, useful for holding out until reinforcements arrive). An Army can only face one direction at a time, which means that a player using multiple Armies to attack one opposing Army has a significant flanking advantage (e.g. their offensive units can easily outnumber and destroy the opponent's defensive units). The aim of this system is to allow a more grand-strategy-type form of combat, where your leader is commanding entire Armies instead of individual units, as each unit in a battle carries out its function automatically. This, hopefully, leads to a less tedious and larger-scale-feeling game, as well as a superior AI.
Naval and air combat:
Naval units are also grouped into offensive (bireme, galleon, ironclad, battleship, etc), flanking (trireme, caravel, torpedo boat, submarine, etc), and defensive (fire-thrower, gunboat, corvette, destroyer, etc) ships, and form Fleets instead of Armies. However, ranged and siege units are replaced by a Transport category, which includes cargo ships, cogs, steamships, aircraft carriers, etc, and which replaces the previous embarkment system. Whilst any single naval unit can 'carry' a single land unit onboard, transport ships can carry an entire 7-unit Army onboard, drastically reducing the hassle and tedium of moving Armies overseas one at a time. Transports also provide a healing bonus to adjacent ships, making them highly useful in the centre of any Fleet. Navies are much more effective in Civ 7 than in previous games, as even basic offensive units can deal high damage to city walls.
Later transports, such as the aircraft carrier and its upgraded versions, can also carry air units. Air units function separately to land and naval units, represented as individual squadrons launched from cities/aerodromes/carriers. Air forces are also much more effective compared to previous games, as they can attack units inside city walls and deal extremely high damage. This reflects the increasing real-life focus towards air superiority that has taken place since the invention of flight. Navies eventually become focused around 'carrier strike groups', moving mobile marine forces and air squadrons around the world to quickly destroy enemy forces.
Cities:
Cities are revamped to be more in-depth and immersive. When a city is settled, it creates the 'city centre' - a 7 tile area which takes up an entire macro-tile, and is surrounded by a 6-sided wall. The city can of course grow to micro-tiles outside this area, but the 7-tile region will always remain the city centre. The central tile in the centre automatically becomes a 'government district'. The remaining 6 tiles are used to build other districts (when researched), such as commercial, scientific, religious, military, or factory districts. These districts provide significant yields to a city and more than one of the same kind can be built in a city centre, allowing high levels of specialisation, although the maximum number of districts allowed in a city at one time is determined by its population. The maximum radius of a city is one macro-tile, which means the largest possible city size is 42 micro-tiles excluding the central 7. Improvements can be built outside of the city centre and then upgraded over time to increase their yield. For example:
Trading post -> Trading village -> Commercial town -> Commercial zone
Farm/Mine -> Farming/Mining village -> Agricultural/Industrial town -> Agricultural/Industrial zone
Outpost -> Encampment -> Fort -> Base
Fishing village -> Fishing town -> Port -> International harbour
Builders no longer exist as the city works on improvements by itself, and roads are built by traders. Cities are more visually impressive, as each improvement also adds new houses - a fully developed city can become a high-density metropolis.
As stated previously, each city settled starts with a wall surrounding the city centre, which can be upgraded over time. In order to capture a city, the player must break down at least once section of the wall and then kill any garrisoned units - i.e. there is no city health, and the only way a city can defend itself is via a garrison and supporting Armies (since the city centre is one macro-tile, the maximum size of a garrison is 7 units / one Army). This system favours the defender as it is somewhat difficult to capture a city; offensive/defensive/flanking units cannot harm garrisoned units without first destroying a section of the city's walls, and only siege units can do significant damage to walls. Naval units can also attack coastal cities from a coastal macro-tile, and have an advantage over land invasions because most naval units are strong against walls.
Vassalage:
Since taking cities is difficult, causes over-extension, and incurs large diplomatic penalties, the domination victory condition has been revamped. In order to win a domination victory, a player must now make every other civ in the world their vassal. Civs and city states will agree to be vassals in a peace deal if they have faced significant destruction of their land and/or military. The master civ can demand different forms of tribute from the vassal, but severe terms can cause them to eventually attempt to revolt, in an attempt to force the master to end the vassalage in a peace treaty. Due to the new and improved diplomacy system outlined later on, as well as the better-defended nature of cities and improved AI, domination is nevertheless a highly difficult victory condition, but is now far more realistic.
Trade routes:
As in Civ 6, traders construct roads when sent onto a trade route. However, instead of the player moving a small number of traders around their empire, each trade route is essentially permanent, as part of the new trade network system - cities must be actively connected to the capital (or to another city connected to the capital) in order to be considered part of a civ's trade network. This means that, once a trader is sent on a trade route between two cities, new trade routes can only be created by either creating new traders (for which there is no limit) or by moving the currently existing trader onto a new trade route (removing the trade route they originally created). Since trade networks are effectively essential for a functioning economy, this enables trade route pillaging to become an extremely effective way of destabilising an opposing civ. In addition to the usual benefits, trade networks also automatically distribute resources around the player's cities (i.e. food and luxury resources are moved from well-fed/happy cities to starving/unhappy cities). The yield of a trade route is determined by the time it takes the trader to complete the journey each way. This means that naval trade routes are often much more beneficial than land routes, and that all trade routes will increase in yield as roads/naval technology improve.
Globe:
Instead of a flat cylindrical map, the game now takes place on a proper earth-like sphere. For the geometry to work, 12 equidistant tiles must be pentagons - these can be impassible tiles, such as mountains, as well as the North and South poles. This enables tactically interesting scenarios where invasions occur over the arctic, and there could potentially be civs with UUs or UAs that allow them to traverse the ice. The minimap is rendered somewhat irrelevant as the player can now simply zoom out to see a large part of the globe's surface, although it is still available and can be used to produce a time-lapse at the end of a game. Exploration is now more rewarding as discovering that the world is round gives a significant early boost to science and culture. Furthermore, there is now interplanetary colonisation - the player can send colonies to the Moon, which also has proper spherical geometry (and is sized proportionally to the size of the 'earth' map), in order to mine helium-3 for nuclear fusion. In fact, the science victory condition involves launching Moon-based fusion-powered colony ships towards Mars (although this can be complicated by opponents upon the development of energy-based weaponry in the Helium Age).
Currency:
At the start of the game, all civs use gold as their generic currency. However, when the player unlocks the currency civic in the Bronze Age, they can switch to using a custom currency which replaces gold (e.g. dollars, pounds, euros, yen, etc). Gold per turn is equal to currency per turn - a tile that yields 1 GPT will also yield 1 dollar per turn, but the currency can increase in value relative to gold. This allows cheaper purchases and superior trading deals given a fixed GPT. The value of each currency is dependent on how much of that currency is produced per turn all over the world, and currency values can be tracked on a world graph. One of the best ways to improve the value of your currency is to become the suzerain of city states, as they produce large amounts of gold per turn and will adopt the currency of their suzerain. Other methods include dominating other civs and then, when bargaining for peace, forcing them to adopt your currency. In the early game, the differences between currencies are small, but later on they can widen significantly. Civs with non-valuable currencies can easily begin to suffer recessions, once their currencies begin to clash with more powerful ones, and subsequently will switch back to gold or to a more dominant currency. Players can achieve economic victories by having their currency be the sole remaining currency in the game (apart from gold).
Taxation:
GPT now reflects the total performance of the economy, and civs must use taxation in order to add money to their treasury. The tax rate can be set at intervals of 10%, ranging from 0% to 100%, either globally or at the local level. At zero taxation, the player will lose money due to the inherent maintenance costs of cities. Increasing the tax rate by 10% will decrease happiness in each city by 5, meaning that a city taxed at 100% will never rise above 50 happiness. Players must find the most effective tax rate for their specific situation.
AI improvements and alliances:
Improving the AI's tactical ability is easier said than done, so there is now an entirely new alliance system to boost the effectiveness of the AI outside of combat. Alliances are highly complex voluntary organisations of players formed in order to curb the success of dominant players, and are based around one or more focuses:
City states:
As with other civs, the player's favour with city states is tracked numerically, with zero representing neutrality, positive numbers representing friendliness, and negative numbers representing unfriendliness. In order to make a city state your protectorate, you must increase your reputation with them up to at least 100, although there is no upper bound on reputation and civs can battle for suzerainty indefinitely. Methods to increase reputation are similar to Civ 5, but now with a much larger focus on quests - buying/bribing city states to make them your protectorate is now extremely costly, whereas each completed quest yields 25 reputation points (and unlike Civ 5, reputation does not decay passively over time). However, civs that are geographically near city states have a significant advantage, as incorporating a city state into your trade network yields 50 reputation points - this prevents civs on the other side of the world from stealing city states next to your borders. Alongside the usual benefits, the protected city state will adopt your currency, which will give a significant boost to its value, since city states have very large gold production per turn (albeit with low taxes).
Miscellaneous:
Ages and Strategic Resources:
In order to clear up the confusion regarding the names of eras (e.g. "Renaissance" and "Modern" making no sense), I think that Civ 7 should revamp this system. My suggestion is the idea of "Ages", which represent general eras of technology without reference to real life Western-centric history. The Ages are separated based on the discovery of new strategic resources which, like in Gathering Storm, can now be stockpiled for future use as they are now far more important:
- Stone Age - analogous to the Ancient Era. This Age automatically begins at the start of the game. Stone is a highly useful resource as it is required to construct most buildings throughout the game, but only basic units can be recruited at this point (note that horses are no longer a strategic resource, as this would remove the consistency of every strategic resource being 'mined').
- Bronze Age - analogous to the Classical Era. Bronze unlocks proper military units, including swordsmen, bowmen, catapults, etc, as well as a larger variety of naval ships. Bronze is later used to make bullets for modern infantry.
- Iron Age - analogous to the Medieval Era. Iron allows further development of military tactics and units, as well as proper ocean-faring warships. The jump from "Classical" to "Medieval" does not make sense as it ignores the existence of the Middle/Dark ages, so this new system allows for a more neutral and contextually-sensical progression. Iron is used throughout the game for buildings and units.
- Gunpowder Age - analogous to the Renaissance Era (also non-sensical naming as no Dark/Middle Age occurs in any civ's timeline). Better ranged and siege weapons now possible. Gunpowder is used continuously throughout the game for military units up until the Helium Age.
- Coal Age - analogous to the Industrial Era. Electricity generation allows for significantly increased production whilst allowing steamships and ironclads to rule the seas. Coal is used for energy throughout the game but later on competes with other energy sources.
- Oil Age - analogous to the Modern Era (again, non-sensically named). Oil is rarer than coal but allows for faster moving units and higher energy production. This Age is roughly situated around the late 19th century stretching past WW1.
- Uranium Age - analogous to the Atomic Era, roughly 1940-1970. Although most units continue to use oil, uranium is used to produce units such as nuclear aircraft carriers and submarines, whilst also providing high-yield clean energy.
- Silicon Age - analogous to the Information Era. Silicon allows for advanced transistor-based electronics to be produced, allowing for advanced military units and the Internet.
- Helium Age - analogous to the Future Era. Helium-3, mined from the surface of the Moon, allows for expensive but high-yield electricity generation in the form of nuclear fusion. Energy weapons dominate the battlefield, and civilisations begin to set their eyes on Mars as the next target for colonisation after the Moon.
Government systems and politicians:
Instead of Civ 6 where government systems are purely superficial, my ideal Civ 7 would make them a core function of the game. In the Stone Age, every civ is simply titled a 'chiefdom'. However, upon unlocking the relevant Bronze Age civic, civilizations may choose one of four governmental systems: autocracy, monarchy, republic, or democracy. These all represent a 'tree' - as the game progresses, players can continue down the tree they began on, replacing their government system with more modern ones:
Autocracy -> Despotic Autocracy -> Imperial Autocracy -> Fascist Autocracy
Monarchy -> Feudal Monarchy -> Constitutional Monarchy -> Parliamentary Monarchy
Republic -> Merchant Republic -> Classical Republic -> Capitalist Republic
Democracy -> Direct Democracy -> Worker Democracy -> Digital Democracy
Civs play through the Stone Age with a default leader (e.g. George Washington for America or William the Conqueror for England), but upon choosing a government system can gain access to that civilization's pool of politicians, unlocked progressively by civics (e.g. Thomas Jefferson in the Bronze Age, Abraham Lincoln in the Gunpowder Age, George W. Bush in the Silicon Age, etc.) and each possessing a unique trait. Traits can be focused towards science, military, culture, gold, production, food/housing/happiness, etc. Since a civ can only have one leader, other politicians may be selected as Governors, each representing a different city. Whilst Governors' traits only apply to their city, the leader's traits apply to the entire civ, making careful selection of politicians highly important. A Governor can only be appointed to a city if a Governor's Estate has been constructed, and the limit as to how many Estates can be built in one civ increases with each tier of government (e.g. a monarchy can build 2 estates, but a feudal monarchy can build 4 and a parliamentary monarchy can build 8).
When selecting a new leader or governor (as they can die of old age or even be assassinated), autocratic civs may appoint any successor at will, without an election. However, autocratic civs suffer a significant happiness penalty to all cities. Monarchical civs may appoint a successive leader at will, but governors are elected by the population, which can often disrupt a player's long-term plans, but at the benefit of a reduced happiness penalty. Republics have elections for both governors and their leader, with a small happiness benefit to compensate. Democracies do not have leaders, instead being led by a council of their elected governors, but with a major happiness boost to counter the lack of a leader's civ-wide trait. Players must therefore choose between having the freedom to appoint politicians and having high happiness, as either could outweigh the other in certain circumstances. Once a player has started a tree they can switch to other trees (provided they have unlocked the necessary civics), albeit with a penalty. Moving 'downwards' (e.g. autocracy to republic) causes a period of anarchy in which the player's cities have zero production and growth. Moving the other direction causes multiple rebellions to occur - the more drastic the shift, the more severe the penalty. Each civ and its current leader is given a title based on their government system (e.g. Emperor Washington of the Autocracy of America, Queen Victoria of the Kingdom of England, President Caesar of the Roman Republic, etc).
The new cultural victory is inspired by the way culture and ideology interfaced in Civ 5 - i.e. civs with different government systems cause cultural pressure on each other, and culturally submissive civs suffer increased unrest as a result. This idea is expanded so that a cultural victory requires converting every other civ in the world to your government tree (autocracy, monarchy, republic, or democracy) by becoming culturally dominant over them and thus causing massive unhappiness until they convert. However, this restricts the number of culture-focused players in a game to just 4 - the players who first found each ideology.
Happiness:
The happiness system is a blend of Civ 5's happiness system and Civ 6's amenities system. Happiness is represented by a number between -100 and +100 and is localised to each city. It is highly important to maintain as this number represents the percentage boost to the output of a city - i.e. a city at +100 happiness will produce double hammers/gold/science/etc, whilst a city at -50 happiness will have its output halved. Below -50 happiness, a city will experience occasional riots/anarchy which prevents production and growth for several turns. Below -75 happiness, rebellions will occur. Happiness is determined by a large number of factors, including government system, food surplus, housing, access to luxuries, war weariness, leader/minister traits, and others. This system solves the Civ 5 problem of random cities revolting due to slight over-expansions, whilst preventing Civ 6-style snowballing where there is no penalty to settling/conquering new cities.
Macro-tiles and micro-tiles:
A new feature introduced to solve problems regarding cities and units-per-tile is the system of macro and micro hex tiles, as seen here: https://preview.redd.it/rv3fomawbk7...bp&s=d686f44475996ed120af9355100791aa8fdc659a. Each group of 7 micro-tiles is joined together to create one large macro-tile, for the purposes outlined in the next couple sections. Whilst features such as rivers/forests/bonus resources can be different within a macro-tile, the general terrain of each hex within one is the same (i.e. either all land, all sea, all coast, all mountain, etc).
Land combat:
In a complete shift away from Stacks of Doom and 1-unit-per-tile, my ideal combat system is inspired by games such as Total War and Call to Power 2. Units are grouped together into Armies, similar to TW, which take up an entire macro-tile. However, there is still a limit of 1 unit per each micro-tile within an army, which means that the maximum size of an Army is 7 units. Furthermore, in the style of CTP2, it is largely the unit composition and placement within an Army which determines its strength. Land units are divided into 5 categories:
- Offensive units, e.g. warrior, swordsman, arquebusier, infantry, are the main foot-soldiers of an Army and should be placed on its front-line as they can only attack adjacent units.
- Flanking units, e.g. horseman, chariot, knight, tank, move around to the sides of an opposing Army in order to attack their weaker units.
- Defensive units, e.g. spearman, pikeman, anti-tank gun, mobile SAM, protect the sides and rear of their army, and do extra damage against flanking units.
- Ranged units, e.g. bowman, rifleman, machine gun, mortar, do high damage against all other units but have weak defence, and so should be placed at the rear of an army.
- Siege units, e.g. catapult, trebuchet, cannon, artillery, are the same as ranged units but do high damage to city walls instead of units, which they are weak against.
A battle occurs when an Army is moved to attack an opposing Army. All 7 units move as one cohesive unit that is constrained to moving between macro-tiles. Battle takes place over multiple turns, giving each player the choice to change strategies before all of their units are dead. The defending Army has the choice of either also attacking (leading to an even battle), retreating (which deals a limited amount of damage), or fortifying (which minimises losses but also deals minimal damage to the attacker, useful for holding out until reinforcements arrive). An Army can only face one direction at a time, which means that a player using multiple Armies to attack one opposing Army has a significant flanking advantage (e.g. their offensive units can easily outnumber and destroy the opponent's defensive units). The aim of this system is to allow a more grand-strategy-type form of combat, where your leader is commanding entire Armies instead of individual units, as each unit in a battle carries out its function automatically. This, hopefully, leads to a less tedious and larger-scale-feeling game, as well as a superior AI.
Naval and air combat:
Naval units are also grouped into offensive (bireme, galleon, ironclad, battleship, etc), flanking (trireme, caravel, torpedo boat, submarine, etc), and defensive (fire-thrower, gunboat, corvette, destroyer, etc) ships, and form Fleets instead of Armies. However, ranged and siege units are replaced by a Transport category, which includes cargo ships, cogs, steamships, aircraft carriers, etc, and which replaces the previous embarkment system. Whilst any single naval unit can 'carry' a single land unit onboard, transport ships can carry an entire 7-unit Army onboard, drastically reducing the hassle and tedium of moving Armies overseas one at a time. Transports also provide a healing bonus to adjacent ships, making them highly useful in the centre of any Fleet. Navies are much more effective in Civ 7 than in previous games, as even basic offensive units can deal high damage to city walls.
Later transports, such as the aircraft carrier and its upgraded versions, can also carry air units. Air units function separately to land and naval units, represented as individual squadrons launched from cities/aerodromes/carriers. Air forces are also much more effective compared to previous games, as they can attack units inside city walls and deal extremely high damage. This reflects the increasing real-life focus towards air superiority that has taken place since the invention of flight. Navies eventually become focused around 'carrier strike groups', moving mobile marine forces and air squadrons around the world to quickly destroy enemy forces.
Cities:
Cities are revamped to be more in-depth and immersive. When a city is settled, it creates the 'city centre' - a 7 tile area which takes up an entire macro-tile, and is surrounded by a 6-sided wall. The city can of course grow to micro-tiles outside this area, but the 7-tile region will always remain the city centre. The central tile in the centre automatically becomes a 'government district'. The remaining 6 tiles are used to build other districts (when researched), such as commercial, scientific, religious, military, or factory districts. These districts provide significant yields to a city and more than one of the same kind can be built in a city centre, allowing high levels of specialisation, although the maximum number of districts allowed in a city at one time is determined by its population. The maximum radius of a city is one macro-tile, which means the largest possible city size is 42 micro-tiles excluding the central 7. Improvements can be built outside of the city centre and then upgraded over time to increase their yield. For example:
Trading post -> Trading village -> Commercial town -> Commercial zone
Farm/Mine -> Farming/Mining village -> Agricultural/Industrial town -> Agricultural/Industrial zone
Outpost -> Encampment -> Fort -> Base
Fishing village -> Fishing town -> Port -> International harbour
Builders no longer exist as the city works on improvements by itself, and roads are built by traders. Cities are more visually impressive, as each improvement also adds new houses - a fully developed city can become a high-density metropolis.
As stated previously, each city settled starts with a wall surrounding the city centre, which can be upgraded over time. In order to capture a city, the player must break down at least once section of the wall and then kill any garrisoned units - i.e. there is no city health, and the only way a city can defend itself is via a garrison and supporting Armies (since the city centre is one macro-tile, the maximum size of a garrison is 7 units / one Army). This system favours the defender as it is somewhat difficult to capture a city; offensive/defensive/flanking units cannot harm garrisoned units without first destroying a section of the city's walls, and only siege units can do significant damage to walls. Naval units can also attack coastal cities from a coastal macro-tile, and have an advantage over land invasions because most naval units are strong against walls.
Vassalage:
Since taking cities is difficult, causes over-extension, and incurs large diplomatic penalties, the domination victory condition has been revamped. In order to win a domination victory, a player must now make every other civ in the world their vassal. Civs and city states will agree to be vassals in a peace deal if they have faced significant destruction of their land and/or military. The master civ can demand different forms of tribute from the vassal, but severe terms can cause them to eventually attempt to revolt, in an attempt to force the master to end the vassalage in a peace treaty. Due to the new and improved diplomacy system outlined later on, as well as the better-defended nature of cities and improved AI, domination is nevertheless a highly difficult victory condition, but is now far more realistic.
Trade routes:
As in Civ 6, traders construct roads when sent onto a trade route. However, instead of the player moving a small number of traders around their empire, each trade route is essentially permanent, as part of the new trade network system - cities must be actively connected to the capital (or to another city connected to the capital) in order to be considered part of a civ's trade network. This means that, once a trader is sent on a trade route between two cities, new trade routes can only be created by either creating new traders (for which there is no limit) or by moving the currently existing trader onto a new trade route (removing the trade route they originally created). Since trade networks are effectively essential for a functioning economy, this enables trade route pillaging to become an extremely effective way of destabilising an opposing civ. In addition to the usual benefits, trade networks also automatically distribute resources around the player's cities (i.e. food and luxury resources are moved from well-fed/happy cities to starving/unhappy cities). The yield of a trade route is determined by the time it takes the trader to complete the journey each way. This means that naval trade routes are often much more beneficial than land routes, and that all trade routes will increase in yield as roads/naval technology improve.
Globe:
Instead of a flat cylindrical map, the game now takes place on a proper earth-like sphere. For the geometry to work, 12 equidistant tiles must be pentagons - these can be impassible tiles, such as mountains, as well as the North and South poles. This enables tactically interesting scenarios where invasions occur over the arctic, and there could potentially be civs with UUs or UAs that allow them to traverse the ice. The minimap is rendered somewhat irrelevant as the player can now simply zoom out to see a large part of the globe's surface, although it is still available and can be used to produce a time-lapse at the end of a game. Exploration is now more rewarding as discovering that the world is round gives a significant early boost to science and culture. Furthermore, there is now interplanetary colonisation - the player can send colonies to the Moon, which also has proper spherical geometry (and is sized proportionally to the size of the 'earth' map), in order to mine helium-3 for nuclear fusion. In fact, the science victory condition involves launching Moon-based fusion-powered colony ships towards Mars (although this can be complicated by opponents upon the development of energy-based weaponry in the Helium Age).
Currency:
At the start of the game, all civs use gold as their generic currency. However, when the player unlocks the currency civic in the Bronze Age, they can switch to using a custom currency which replaces gold (e.g. dollars, pounds, euros, yen, etc). Gold per turn is equal to currency per turn - a tile that yields 1 GPT will also yield 1 dollar per turn, but the currency can increase in value relative to gold. This allows cheaper purchases and superior trading deals given a fixed GPT. The value of each currency is dependent on how much of that currency is produced per turn all over the world, and currency values can be tracked on a world graph. One of the best ways to improve the value of your currency is to become the suzerain of city states, as they produce large amounts of gold per turn and will adopt the currency of their suzerain. Other methods include dominating other civs and then, when bargaining for peace, forcing them to adopt your currency. In the early game, the differences between currencies are small, but later on they can widen significantly. Civs with non-valuable currencies can easily begin to suffer recessions, once their currencies begin to clash with more powerful ones, and subsequently will switch back to gold or to a more dominant currency. Players can achieve economic victories by having their currency be the sole remaining currency in the game (apart from gold).
Taxation:
GPT now reflects the total performance of the economy, and civs must use taxation in order to add money to their treasury. The tax rate can be set at intervals of 10%, ranging from 0% to 100%, either globally or at the local level. At zero taxation, the player will lose money due to the inherent maintenance costs of cities. Increasing the tax rate by 10% will decrease happiness in each city by 5, meaning that a city taxed at 100% will never rise above 50 happiness. Players must find the most effective tax rate for their specific situation.
AI improvements and alliances:
Improving the AI's tactical ability is easier said than done, so there is now an entirely new alliance system to boost the effectiveness of the AI outside of combat. Alliances are highly complex voluntary organisations of players formed in order to curb the success of dominant players, and are based around one or more focuses:
- Military alliance: formed by militarily weak civs to prevent a civ from achieving a domination victory.
- Economic alliance: formed by economically-weak civs who adopt a common currency in order to prevent a civ from achieving an economic victory.
- Research alliance: formed by scientifically-weak civs who combine their total science into one common fund, in order to prevent a civ from achieving a science victory.
- Religious alliance: formed by religiously-weak civs who adopt a common religion in order to prevent a civ from achieving a religious victory.
- Political alliance: formed by culturally-weak civs who adopt a common ideology/government system in order to prevent a civ from achieving a cultural victory.
City states:
As with other civs, the player's favour with city states is tracked numerically, with zero representing neutrality, positive numbers representing friendliness, and negative numbers representing unfriendliness. In order to make a city state your protectorate, you must increase your reputation with them up to at least 100, although there is no upper bound on reputation and civs can battle for suzerainty indefinitely. Methods to increase reputation are similar to Civ 5, but now with a much larger focus on quests - buying/bribing city states to make them your protectorate is now extremely costly, whereas each completed quest yields 25 reputation points (and unlike Civ 5, reputation does not decay passively over time). However, civs that are geographically near city states have a significant advantage, as incorporating a city state into your trade network yields 50 reputation points - this prevents civs on the other side of the world from stealing city states next to your borders. Alongside the usual benefits, the protected city state will adopt your currency, which will give a significant boost to its value, since city states have very large gold production per turn (albeit with low taxes).
Miscellaneous:
- New cities can be converted into colonies, which removes their maintenance costs but also gives them autonomy over what they produce. Colonies provide tax revenue and strategic resources to their owner, but will revolt if the tax rate is too high. Colonies allow civs to expand quickly and improve their economy without suffering high maintenance costs.
- Bordering cities can use their culture to 'battle' for tiles, as in Civ 4, and a city become useless or even flip over to the opposing civ if it loses all of its surrounding tiles.
- Cities experiencing high levels of homelessness can develop diseases which will slowly kill off the population, and require special medical buildings to be built in order to remedy. Diseases can also spread to other cities, although this can be reduced by cutting off the city from the trade network and by garrisoning units there in order to enforce lockdown (topical as of June 2020).
- If a city rebels without a garrison, it automatically becomes a rebel-controlled city, as there is nothing to stop them from controlling the city centre. If a garrison is present, the rebels will spawn outside of the city centre and will attempt to pillage the city's improvements. Therefore, it is always a good idea to place garrisons in your cities.
- The trade deal screen is much more complex, with many more trading options and requests. Trading technologies and maps returns from Civ 4.
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