Playable Natives - Ideas

There are no "techs" in Civ4Col. There has been some talk at various points about bringing a tech tree into Civ4Col, but AFAIK that never went anywhere.

IMO, Civ4 is a far better vehicle for making playable natives with their own cultural specificity than Civ4Col. In Civ4Col the whole game revolves around the idea of exporting goods back to Europe. Any game concept that doesn't involve exporting goods back over the ocean to a distant homeland is going to require profound and extensive modifications to the Civ4Col concept.

This topic has been discussed many times before, and I invariably find that the folks arguing for "playable natives" haven't really thought through the fundamental changes this would require. I agree that it would be a very cool project, and encourage anyone with the ambition and programming skills to undertake it, but I remain skeptical.

Take a look at what Dale did with playable pirates. Pirates require far fewer profound conceptual changes than making playable natives, but in the end Dale found that the systems he'd put in place to make them unique and interesting just weren't working enough to make playable pirates a viable option. IMHO, making playable natives will be ten times more difficult than making viable pirates.

YMMV, --- Wheldrake

Playable natives would require the following:

1. A replacement for War of Independence Victory
2. A replacement for the trading goods system
3. A replacement for Europe

The first option could be- you make it where your rebel sentiment rises as the European colonies threaten you, increase their presence in your land, overrun your settlements, declare war on you, etc. When you reach 50% "native anger" (?), you can choose to declare war on the colonies. (perhaps declaring war before then should be not allowed?)

The second option is much more difficult. Perhaps you could remove their ability to process some goods (like tobacco, sugar) until Europeans traded them such goods. Or, maybe, you could make their city have, instead of processing buildings, "trading posts", where you traded some of the non-processed good for the European processed good...

I have no clue what to replace Europe with.
 
Playable natives would require the following:

1. A replacement for War of Independence Victory
2. A replacement for the trading goods system
3. A replacement for Europe

The first option could be- you make it where your rebel sentiment rises as the European colonies threaten you, increase their presence in your land, overrun your settlements, declare war on you, etc. When you reach 50% "native anger" (?), you can choose to declare war on the colonies. (perhaps declaring war before then should be not allowed?)

The second option is much more difficult. Perhaps you could remove their ability to process some goods (like tobacco, sugar) until Europeans traded them such goods. Or, maybe, you could make their city have, instead of processing buildings, "trading posts", where you traded some of the non-processed good for the European processed good...

I have no clue what to replace Europe with.

In terms of replacement for Rebel Sentiment, Native Anger could have the strength effect like Rebel Sentiment. The Ultimate goal should be recognition as a state, like the WoI. This could be through war, or through being civilised.

I know a previous poster said this game had no Tech system. Would the Great Person system work, whereby you need a specialised unit to create an improvement? That could allow you to become civilised.

The key really is to become civilised. Through the technology achievement system. You could send a Native to a city and in X turns, he could come back as a Civilised Native (Same skin as converted native).

So, the ultimate goal should be to become a sovereign state, through war or civilisation. Of course, you couldn't just make your claim willy nilly and have your 10 Braves demolish a petty little coastal village with a soldier and be a sovereign state. It should require something, like the rebel sentiment bar, where one end is barbarism :hammer2: and the other is civilized :hatsoff: . By reaching 51%, you can make the request, which, in all circumstances, the Europeans will deny and declare war. Or, if your borders dominate European borders for X turns, you could have the European submit you to being a nation.

Thoughts?
 
In terms of replacement for Rebel Sentiment, Native Anger could have the strength effect like Rebel Sentiment. The Ultimate goal should be recognition as a state, like the WoI. This could be through war, or through being civilised.

I know a previous poster said this game had no Tech system. Would the Great Person system work, whereby you need a specialised unit to create an improvement? That could allow you to become civilised.

The key really is to become civilised. Through the technology achievement system. You could send a Native to a city and in X turns, he could come back as a Civilised Native (Same skin as converted native).

So, the ultimate goal should be to become a sovereign state, through war or civilisation. Of course, you couldn't just make your claim willy nilly and have your 10 Braves demolish a petty little coastal village with a soldier and be a sovereign state. It should require something, like the rebel sentiment bar, where one end is barbarism :hammer2: and the other is civilized :hatsoff: . By reaching 51%, you can make the request, which, in all circumstances, the Europeans will deny and declare war. Or, if your borders dominate European borders for X turns, you could have the European submit you to being a nation.

Thoughts?

Still, you would need a replacement for Europe. Which no one has been able to suggest yet...
 
Still, you would need a replacement for Europe. Which no one has been able to suggest yet...

Gods? You make sacrifices to Gods that give bonuses. I'm not talking on the scale of earthquakes, volcano eruptions, etc.

As an example, you sacrifice 100 tobacco to the Gods. In return, this sparks religious worship :religion:, bringing coinage :commerce: to the temples.
 
Gods? You make sacrifices to Gods that give bonuses. I'm not talking on the scale of earthquakes, volcano eruptions, etc.

As an example, you sacrifice 100 tobacco to the Gods. In return, this sparks religious worship :religion:, bringing coinage :commerce: to the temples.

Perhaps, then, there's a "Sacred Area" where you have to bring the goods (via some sort of land transport)?
 
Perhaps, then, there's a "Sacred Area" where you have to bring the goods (via some sort of land transport)?

That's where the problem starts. There are no horses, so no wagons. There could be a sacred city and things could be transported by canoe on river. Cities could have temples, but with less benefits. As well, the priests will deem the Gods want different sacrifices, bringing up and down the price of certain goods. Then goods which are not used for X turns can become sacred and their sacrifice can be bountiful.

I don't know how the unit purchase and banned goods would go. The Gods could make demands. For example, sacrifice 1 population or a warrior, or we will not allow you to sacrifice cotton to us. Instead of units, the gods could give battle bonuses and the like.

Of course, because you can't rebel from Gods, the gods will simply advatnadge or disadvantage you when becoming sovereign.

The economy should be more agrarian, which is to say, having indigo, coffee, bison, etc. is essential.
 
Well, you lads are chewing on part of the problem, but the real indigestible bone runs deeper: European civilization is fundamentally based on the production of commodities, and Native American civilization is not.

You touch on that when you suggest a need for a "replacement for Europe". What is Europe in Civ4Col? It is a place where you sell commodities for cash, and pay cash for new colonists, canons, ships, horses, guns and the like.

So many aspects of the game revolve around commodities and their production: buildings, specialists, transportation via wagon trains and ships, etc. I just can't picture native civilizations jumping through all those hoops to produce goods that they would not see as culturally important.

Note that there is no system in the game whereby you can sell commodities to your own citizens; there is no "domestic market" system. For the rest, I'll quote one of my earlier posts:
IMHO, pirates are not yet really playable in AoD. I'm glad Dale intends to "balance" them, but the design challenge is huge. Making the natives playable is an even greater challenge.

After all, the native cultures just didn't have the same concept of division of labour as the Europeans, and it's this concept which gives us all the varied professions, and hence builds, that we find in Civ4Col. Even for the more advanced civilizations like the Mayas or the Aztecs, most of the existing buildings and improvements and profession types would be ridiculously anachronistic.

And frankly, I just don't see what you could replace them with that would be sufficiently complex and interesting to make a playable version of the game for the natives. Not without transforming them into a gimped copy of the Europeans. Even the very concept of land ownership doesn't transfer.

Let's face it, no matter how politically correct we try to be, the native civilizations were history's designated victims, in the face of aggressive European expansionist paradigms.

To sum it up, I feel a "playable natives" game would be so fundamentally different from Civ4Col that the Civ4Col game engine just wouldn't be an appropriate starting point. In Civ4, commodity production is abstracted to such an extent that it would be a far better vehicle for such a mod. IMHO.

Cheers, --- Wheldrake
 
What Wheldrake said is exactly the stumbling block I came across, and why I am hesitant to look into it further. I just can't think of a fun way to simulate the same. With the trading, and Europe, a lot of the game is lost. Playing Natives would thus become boring and unfun.
 
The Aztecs and Incas had mines, grew non-food crops and made lots of luxury goods right? From what I know they were as interested in commodities as medieval Europeans were. But obviously even if people agreed on that it wouldn't solve the game mechanics problem.

Would it be possible to change Colonization so that there was some form of "domestic market" to provide a point for creating luxury goods other than selling them to Europe? (By luxury goods I mean silver, cloth, coats, rum and cigars)

Maybe (and obviously this would be a very big overhaul) a variant of the Civilization happiness mechanics could be introduced to Colonization. Cities would consume a certain number of luxury goods per turn, and if the city's luxury requirement is not met, then a certain number of citizens will become unhappy/unproductive. The amount of luxury they need would depend on the city population, something like this:

Population 1–3: do not need any luxuries (they're tough pioneer types)
Population 4: need one luxury of any kind
pop 5: need two luxuries of different kinds
pop 6: need three luxuries of different kinds
pop 7: need four luxuries of different kinds
pop 8: need five luxuries of different kinds
pop 9: need six luxuries, including at least one of each kind
pop 10, need seven luxuries, including at least one of each kind and no more than two of one kind
pop 11, need eight luxuries, including at least one of each kind and no more than two of one kind
etc.
 
Civ4 will be a better vehicle for this mod concept than Civ4Col.

YMMV, --- Wheldrake
 
Would it be possible to change Colonization so that there was some form of "domestic market" to provide a point for creating luxury goods other than selling them to Europe? (By luxury goods I mean silver, cloth, coats, rum and cigars)

Maybe (and obviously this would be a very big overhaul) a variant of the Civilization happiness mechanics could be introduced to Colonization. Cities would consume a certain number of luxury goods per turn, and if the city's luxury requirement is not met, then a certain number of citizens will become unhappy/unproductive. The amount of luxury they need would depend on the city population, something like this:

Population 1–3: do not need any luxuries (they're tough pioneer types)
Population 4: need one luxury of any kind
pop 5: need two luxuries of different kinds
pop 6: need three luxuries of different kinds
pop 7: need four luxuries of different kinds
pop 8: need five luxuries of different kinds
pop 9: need six luxuries, including at least one of each kind
pop 10, need seven luxuries, including at least one of each kind and no more than two of one kind
pop 11, need eight luxuries, including at least one of each kind and no more than two of one kind
etc.
I support "domestic market" ideas. They are very similar to my proposal.

I'm interesting to find a possibility to keep native villages because I plan to use such places for some special purposes.

At the moment only "native stable" and "native storage" could be build in native villages. No more building could be build in a native village at the moment.

It means that such native village has a lot of free lots that could be used for creation of absolutely new buildings for production or recreation.

For instance, a Factory for production of "native souvenirs" (required "gold", "silver" or "fur"; could be sell in Europe at high price). Aymerick here shows that a number of yields could be more than 16. I don't think that his value shown on the picture (18 yields) is absolute maximum.

Or another building - "Saloon" that required "food" + "alcohol" + "cigars" and give direct profit to the player. Such "saloon" could be build only in former native villages, etc., etc., etc.

Such ideas could be rather easily realized just in real native villages that was captures or received as a gift.
 
I like the direction of your ideas KJ Jansson, but I'm personally more interested in natives as playable, rather than the playing making use of former native settlements. I actually like the way that small native settlements can never be player controlled, since I don't think it adds to the flavour. Maybe it should be possible with large native cities though.

What I would really like is for the domestic market concept to be applied equally to both native americans and europeans. This would open the door to the application of the Colonization resource-based system (which I find much more fun, challenging and realistic than the Civilization food/sheilds/trade model) in all kinds of different scenarios - scenarios which don't rely on an "off-stage" overseas market. Unfortunately I don't have the time or skill to implement such a thing myself so I was hoping someone else would :).
 
I think that playable natives would only be fun if you had more easy access to European resources. Maybe you can build trading posts in your villages, which would attract traders(which don't belong to any nation) where you give resources that only natives can get in exchange for guns, tools, and other European stuff. You also can send your own traders to european settlements and do the same. I don't know, I just like the idea of being able to play as the natives and fight european colonists. Maybe natives could also have a raider unit like in Crossroads of the World where you can't tell what nation they belong to and can plunder farms and steal resources from the europeans.
 
Playable natives sounds like a separate mod that could be developped at a later date. I'd love to see it, but polishing AoD II / AoFD should take priority.

If you were going down the playable natives route, you're best bet may be to try and copy the Civ3 scenario. In that one, as the natives, you knew you were doomed and your only goal you had when playing them was to try and generate enough culture before the Euros wiped you out.
 
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