Saxo Grammaticus
Clerk
- Joined
- Jul 3, 2021
- Messages
- 548
From recent discussions over in luca's Suggestions thread, as well as looking through the forum, there seems to be support for opening space in Civilization to other groups of people who do not fall neatly under the existing "barbarian"--city-state--civilization division. Part of this has to do with the fact that in the game's timeframe, starting in 4,000 BC, rather than empty, the world ought to already be inhabited by various groups, most of which have not settled cities (barring later starts). The question this thread asks is how the idea of an inhabited world ought to translate into gameplay.
We can start by considering a few different ideas.
First, beefing up Civ VI's existing infrastructure: tribal villages, barbarian camps (including clans mode), and city-states. Instead of their traditional role as goodie huts, perhaps tribal villages (fixed/mobile) would be semi-permanent, with a set of interactions not unlike the clans mode menu. As Alexander’s Hetaroi and Boris have mentioned, a neutral/hostile/friendly orientation or focus on first contact could add another dimension, with hostile villages taking on the role of previous barbarian camps. They would still provide bonuses similar to what they give now, but possibly include unique resources, units, or identity following Zegangani’s earlier thoughts. Ultimately, these villages would likely be subsumed by settling until those that remained were relegated to increasingly undesirable parts of the map.
I am not a fan of these groups inherently settling into villages and then developing into city-states, as has been proposed before, as this would exclude nomadic groups, for instance.
Second, we could pursue a more decentralized approach that saturated the map. One idea I quite like would concern settling the first city. A player’s first city could generate a 5-10 tile radius of cultural identity, where any cities settled there would share a common heritage, including a pantheon. Perhaps the player would be prompted to choose from a variety of pantheons based on the terrain and resources of their radius. Later on, starting around the classical, the cultural union would start to fracture, such that most settling would then involve some degree of assimilation or conflict.
Third, we can look at it from an early vs. mid-game question. What does settling outside of one’s "core" look like in the ancient/classical eras? How about the early modern/industrial? A baseline question would be clashes in cultural/religious identity, where the player may choose to embrace these groups’ traditions or force them to conform. Similarly, differences in technology would likely be more pronounced from the mid-game on.
I see a number of advantages to treating the world as inhabited rather than empty, such as more broadly representing groups under the Civilization threshold, breaking up rote early settling, and serving to integrate questions of identity and heritage. Given all this, I am curious to hear others’ ideas on how to translate the inhabited world into Civilization’s gameplay.
We can start by considering a few different ideas.
First, beefing up Civ VI's existing infrastructure: tribal villages, barbarian camps (including clans mode), and city-states. Instead of their traditional role as goodie huts, perhaps tribal villages (fixed/mobile) would be semi-permanent, with a set of interactions not unlike the clans mode menu. As Alexander’s Hetaroi and Boris have mentioned, a neutral/hostile/friendly orientation or focus on first contact could add another dimension, with hostile villages taking on the role of previous barbarian camps. They would still provide bonuses similar to what they give now, but possibly include unique resources, units, or identity following Zegangani’s earlier thoughts. Ultimately, these villages would likely be subsumed by settling until those that remained were relegated to increasingly undesirable parts of the map.
I am not a fan of these groups inherently settling into villages and then developing into city-states, as has been proposed before, as this would exclude nomadic groups, for instance.
Second, we could pursue a more decentralized approach that saturated the map. One idea I quite like would concern settling the first city. A player’s first city could generate a 5-10 tile radius of cultural identity, where any cities settled there would share a common heritage, including a pantheon. Perhaps the player would be prompted to choose from a variety of pantheons based on the terrain and resources of their radius. Later on, starting around the classical, the cultural union would start to fracture, such that most settling would then involve some degree of assimilation or conflict.
Third, we can look at it from an early vs. mid-game question. What does settling outside of one’s "core" look like in the ancient/classical eras? How about the early modern/industrial? A baseline question would be clashes in cultural/religious identity, where the player may choose to embrace these groups’ traditions or force them to conform. Similarly, differences in technology would likely be more pronounced from the mid-game on.
I see a number of advantages to treating the world as inhabited rather than empty, such as more broadly representing groups under the Civilization threshold, breaking up rote early settling, and serving to integrate questions of identity and heritage. Given all this, I am curious to hear others’ ideas on how to translate the inhabited world into Civilization’s gameplay.
