I already posted my Ideas on another section of the Civ fanatics forum but decided to post it here as well, slightly altered.
I've played CIV's, Colonization, Alpha Centauri and a lot of other similar games and in all of them there is one annoying thing. By mid-late game every province on the map has an improvement on it.
That, to me, detracts from the enjoyment but I can understand it as a design decision. Fill the map early and thus force the players to fight soon.
To me however, it is an unnecessarily limiting factor.
So, to go about this I've thought of a few things I would want to implement, some of them I've already got nailed down.
1.
Settlers are prevented from moving through the following terrains/features:
Desert, Tundra, Marsh, Burning_Sands, Broken_Lands, Snow
Ancient_Forest, Forest, Jungle and Flames.
As the settlers cannot move to these terrain/feature types they cannot found settlements in them. Exception being the first settlement which can be founded anywhere where the settler starts initially.
I've also thought of adding Hill's to the denied territory but that would seem too much. As the player gains new tech, the settlers can pass through new types of terrain.
Tundra and Forest are the first to gain passage through with Snow remaining impassable till the end and Desert being the last to gain access.
2.
All "non living" units gain a +3 racial bonus to attack/defence. And all living units gain a bonus similar to copper-iron-mithril from any foods your civilization has, ranging from 0 with no food resources to +5 with high food resources.
3.
All units have their land movement doubled, some have tripled and water movement is also doubled/tripled.
4.
Culture expansion is selective, similar to New Dawn where culture expands to provinces with higher values, before they expand to those which are useless.
5.
There should be roughly 10-15 cultural tiers so that at legendary every province within a range of 4 is within the cultural sphere, at absolute minimum.
6.
Forts when garrisoned by a unit should convert the 9 provinces to the fort controllers culture.
7.
All improvements should have a cost to build.
All improvements should have a upkeep of 1 gold per turn.
All improvements should have a reduction of at least -1 to one of the three attributes.
For example:
Mine should have a -2 reduction to food.
Farm -1 to production
Cottage should have a -1 to food and -1 to production but +1 to commerce and +0.3 to population capacity
8.
There should be a population cap.
Population cap should start at 3 for ancient and increase from there. Every cottage that is within working range but not necessarily worked should increase the cap by 0.3, every improvement level to the cottage should increase that by 0.3. Every era should increase cottage cap by 0.1
There should be buildings that increase population cap but cost a slight reduction to food/production or commerce to build and maintain. Such as a +1 to pop cap for -5% to production.
9.
City working Radius should extend in a Delta pattern: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=5915029&postcount=8 described in detail in this topic. Difference being that every tier only adds 4 to the workable radius instead of the occasional 8, and that there should be 3-4 more cultural levels. So, at 1st level of culture the city should have 4 workable plots and at the last it should have roughly 60.
(the city of thousand slums improvement would increase the population cap instead)
10.
Every tier of culture should give +1 happiness, +.5 to population cap and -2 to health. So that at Legendary culture you would have a +10 to happiness, +5 to population cap and -20 to health, or in that area.
Keeping in mind that large cities would also more likely have health increasing buildings as well as resources this should work to limit large cities to about 10-15 population.
11.
Settler city build closeness is at 3 instead of 2. So cities can’t be built within 3 plots of one another.
12.
Every unit should be significantly more expensive and gain +1 exp at specific situations.
+1 for every 3 turns outside friendly culture
+1 for every 5 turns inside
+1 for every 10 turns in a friendly city
And so on.
Every unit should start with the "chance to escape combat if defeat" promotion.
There should be a "purchase experience points" for every unit stationed in a city with sufficient culture and a barracks. Higher levels of experience are only available if the city has sufficient culture.
13.
There should be map sized higher than Huge. Such as the New Dawn map sizes.
14.
There should be quests that have long chains of events that follow one after another similar to the present scenarios.
Such long quests should have large long term rewards and follow-ups that might last the duration of the game.
Such as in the case of the Harpy child that the old woman protects. If you say that it should turn into a sage and join your city you might get a event some time later where she says the people of the city are not treating her well and you get a choice to intervene on her behalf or have her killed or ask her to move. If you ask her to move she says she remembers that her people are somewhere in the mountains and she feels a call to join them. If you accept she will turn into a great sage again (with a Harpy attribute that enables you to sing in the hills) Then she tells you where she thinks her people are and asks you to get her safely to them. As you get closer and use the sing she reports how close you are. Once you get the right area and sing, there can be many options on what happens from triggering a Golden age to having a large permanent increase to your great person rate to getting several great people and so on.
This might not be a good example of what I mean, the idea is to have events that are charachter specific that translate well from one game to another, events that also check for who the player is playing. That give player specific quests that when failed result in serious problems. The quests should also have a distinct feel similar and large plot similar to the scenarios but by no means so large.
15. (Not sure about these ones yet. As they are dramatic changes to the gameplay.)
Dwarf Races can only build cities in (uncertain about this)mountains and (certainly)hills. (Own settler unit obviously)
Dwarf Races can build workers that can enter mountains that are within cultural sphere. And can build "Dwarven mine" improvements that provide +2 to food/prod/gold.
Dwarven mines are destroyed immediately if outside Dwarf player cultural borders.
Dwarfs receive a food/prod/gold penalty to plots that are not on hills, mountains or tundra. More severe as they progress away from dwarven style up to a -3 for floodplains in desert.
Elf Races can only build Cities on forests (all three types), Jungle or Grasslands. They can cut forests but gain no production (no +20 for them). Elves can build "Elven homes" inside cultural borders in forests and grasslands. Elven homes provide a +1 boost to food/prod/gold and act as forests for elves only. If built outside elf player culture they will immediately be destroyed.
Sea races can build coast and sea specific production improvements. Pirate Cove was a good start but need to think more variety than that. Potential ideas are things like Floating Island http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_island Fish Farm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fish-farms-vietnam.jpg Land Reclamation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reclamation Each consuming one worker boat. Land reclamation being a bit tricky, since its only buildable by a civilization that benefits most from sea and least from land, it is a very tricky concept. I can think of a few cases where it might be beneficial such as closing off an unwanted bay or a site for cottages. And last, land removal. This would turn the province into a coast, but remove the worker and cost significantly.
Floating Island could add a +1 to production and Fish Farm could add +1 to food and Land Reclamation could turn the province into a desert (cottages buildable if next to coast) and Land Removal would turn the province into a coast.
Similar race specific productions should be available for each race besides just infernals with their burning land.
16.
Ability to release a city and have city in an alliance with strong relations with you (or vassal) and upon release you are asked, which race should be dominant. Races available in your entire empire should determine availability.
So that if you have 3 cities each with 10 population and 20% elf and 80% dwarf. You could select the city closest to the forest and release it as a fully elf city and it would remove all the Elf’s from all your other cities and remove all the dwarf from the released city. And add -2 unhappiness for every population moved this way. As well as a financial cost.
This would have easy to see benefits in the form of being able to specialize your alliances by moving the dwarfs to the mountains, elfs to the forests and sea folk to the coast.
17.
Defeated heroes should eventually respawn in your city with a 1-5% chance every turn depending on how you’ve played. They should appear at 0.1% health in your capital and with 0 exp. There should be specific items in every map that when held by the unit that kills a hero, the hero will not respawn.
18.
Distance from the city had a penalty to food/prod/gold.
To offset this, every province produces 1 more of everything except for those that produce nothing at all. Some produce +2 when compared to non-modded.
Every one plot of distance from the city center reduces production of each good by 1.
So that if there are 3 plains, each 1 further away from the city than the previous.
First one would produce 4/3/3 or so, next one 3/2/2 next one 2/1/1 and last one 1/0/0. This combined with a improvement system where every improvement also penalizes by half of what it gives (+2 to gold will create a -1 food or production) would make the outermost edges of the city usually those with the most specialised production. So the innermost parts would most likely fill with those least penalizing (+1 upgrades such as cottages and windmills) the outermost edges would fill with those with the highest bonuses and penalties, such as mines and farms. So if you have a 0/1/0 plot with 0 food 1 prod and 0 gold, you would naturally prefer to build a mine on it, since the penalty would be discounted. So a it would be a 0/4/0 or so.
In total this would produce a system where improvements are rare and tend to specialize in noticable patterns with the least effective in the center and the most effective in the edges. Making raids devastating and forcing the player to actually defend his borders and not turtle in a city.
19. Using spring or any other similar talents that turn a type of land to another should result in a penalty hit to a faction that considers that land their primary.
Aka, using spring on desert should upset the desert folk and so on.
---
There are a few more but my memory isn't what it used to be. I'll post them as I remember them.
All in all these updates would make a world, that by the very late game, would still be mostly uninhabited, uninhabitable and empty.
If it works as I intend, on a gigantic map travelling from one place to another would take roughly the same time as now in terms of comparing it to building or research. But it would almost certainly force you to go through large uninhabited areas, forests, marshes and so on. Where a Human taking a Dwarf city would find they only control the “gates” of the city and the dwarf’s have collapsed the rest and you don’t get the same bonuses. Where a city that is worth considerably to the enemy might be worth nothing to you.
Where it might really be a smart idea to torch an enemy capital instead of capturing it only to build a city right next to where it used to be.
This should, produce a world that is closer to the lore of FfH2, where large areas remain wilderness till the very end and where you are as much at war with the environment as you are with your enemies. Where just trying to get a few cities running so well that they don’t collapse will take a majority of your tax base.
So, any comments?
I've played CIV's, Colonization, Alpha Centauri and a lot of other similar games and in all of them there is one annoying thing. By mid-late game every province on the map has an improvement on it.
That, to me, detracts from the enjoyment but I can understand it as a design decision. Fill the map early and thus force the players to fight soon.
To me however, it is an unnecessarily limiting factor.
So, to go about this I've thought of a few things I would want to implement, some of them I've already got nailed down.
1.
Settlers are prevented from moving through the following terrains/features:
Desert, Tundra, Marsh, Burning_Sands, Broken_Lands, Snow
Ancient_Forest, Forest, Jungle and Flames.
As the settlers cannot move to these terrain/feature types they cannot found settlements in them. Exception being the first settlement which can be founded anywhere where the settler starts initially.
I've also thought of adding Hill's to the denied territory but that would seem too much. As the player gains new tech, the settlers can pass through new types of terrain.
Tundra and Forest are the first to gain passage through with Snow remaining impassable till the end and Desert being the last to gain access.
2.
All "non living" units gain a +3 racial bonus to attack/defence. And all living units gain a bonus similar to copper-iron-mithril from any foods your civilization has, ranging from 0 with no food resources to +5 with high food resources.
3.
All units have their land movement doubled, some have tripled and water movement is also doubled/tripled.
4.
Culture expansion is selective, similar to New Dawn where culture expands to provinces with higher values, before they expand to those which are useless.
5.
There should be roughly 10-15 cultural tiers so that at legendary every province within a range of 4 is within the cultural sphere, at absolute minimum.
6.
Forts when garrisoned by a unit should convert the 9 provinces to the fort controllers culture.
7.
All improvements should have a cost to build.
All improvements should have a upkeep of 1 gold per turn.
All improvements should have a reduction of at least -1 to one of the three attributes.
For example:
Mine should have a -2 reduction to food.
Farm -1 to production
Cottage should have a -1 to food and -1 to production but +1 to commerce and +0.3 to population capacity
8.
There should be a population cap.
Population cap should start at 3 for ancient and increase from there. Every cottage that is within working range but not necessarily worked should increase the cap by 0.3, every improvement level to the cottage should increase that by 0.3. Every era should increase cottage cap by 0.1
There should be buildings that increase population cap but cost a slight reduction to food/production or commerce to build and maintain. Such as a +1 to pop cap for -5% to production.
9.
City working Radius should extend in a Delta pattern: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=5915029&postcount=8 described in detail in this topic. Difference being that every tier only adds 4 to the workable radius instead of the occasional 8, and that there should be 3-4 more cultural levels. So, at 1st level of culture the city should have 4 workable plots and at the last it should have roughly 60.
(the city of thousand slums improvement would increase the population cap instead)
10.
Every tier of culture should give +1 happiness, +.5 to population cap and -2 to health. So that at Legendary culture you would have a +10 to happiness, +5 to population cap and -20 to health, or in that area.
Keeping in mind that large cities would also more likely have health increasing buildings as well as resources this should work to limit large cities to about 10-15 population.
11.
Settler city build closeness is at 3 instead of 2. So cities can’t be built within 3 plots of one another.
12.
Every unit should be significantly more expensive and gain +1 exp at specific situations.
+1 for every 3 turns outside friendly culture
+1 for every 5 turns inside
+1 for every 10 turns in a friendly city
And so on.
Every unit should start with the "chance to escape combat if defeat" promotion.
There should be a "purchase experience points" for every unit stationed in a city with sufficient culture and a barracks. Higher levels of experience are only available if the city has sufficient culture.
13.
There should be map sized higher than Huge. Such as the New Dawn map sizes.
14.
There should be quests that have long chains of events that follow one after another similar to the present scenarios.
Such long quests should have large long term rewards and follow-ups that might last the duration of the game.
Such as in the case of the Harpy child that the old woman protects. If you say that it should turn into a sage and join your city you might get a event some time later where she says the people of the city are not treating her well and you get a choice to intervene on her behalf or have her killed or ask her to move. If you ask her to move she says she remembers that her people are somewhere in the mountains and she feels a call to join them. If you accept she will turn into a great sage again (with a Harpy attribute that enables you to sing in the hills) Then she tells you where she thinks her people are and asks you to get her safely to them. As you get closer and use the sing she reports how close you are. Once you get the right area and sing, there can be many options on what happens from triggering a Golden age to having a large permanent increase to your great person rate to getting several great people and so on.
This might not be a good example of what I mean, the idea is to have events that are charachter specific that translate well from one game to another, events that also check for who the player is playing. That give player specific quests that when failed result in serious problems. The quests should also have a distinct feel similar and large plot similar to the scenarios but by no means so large.
15. (Not sure about these ones yet. As they are dramatic changes to the gameplay.)
Dwarf Races can only build cities in (uncertain about this)mountains and (certainly)hills. (Own settler unit obviously)
Dwarf Races can build workers that can enter mountains that are within cultural sphere. And can build "Dwarven mine" improvements that provide +2 to food/prod/gold.
Dwarven mines are destroyed immediately if outside Dwarf player cultural borders.
Dwarfs receive a food/prod/gold penalty to plots that are not on hills, mountains or tundra. More severe as they progress away from dwarven style up to a -3 for floodplains in desert.
Elf Races can only build Cities on forests (all three types), Jungle or Grasslands. They can cut forests but gain no production (no +20 for them). Elves can build "Elven homes" inside cultural borders in forests and grasslands. Elven homes provide a +1 boost to food/prod/gold and act as forests for elves only. If built outside elf player culture they will immediately be destroyed.
Sea races can build coast and sea specific production improvements. Pirate Cove was a good start but need to think more variety than that. Potential ideas are things like Floating Island http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_island Fish Farm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fish-farms-vietnam.jpg Land Reclamation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reclamation Each consuming one worker boat. Land reclamation being a bit tricky, since its only buildable by a civilization that benefits most from sea and least from land, it is a very tricky concept. I can think of a few cases where it might be beneficial such as closing off an unwanted bay or a site for cottages. And last, land removal. This would turn the province into a coast, but remove the worker and cost significantly.
Floating Island could add a +1 to production and Fish Farm could add +1 to food and Land Reclamation could turn the province into a desert (cottages buildable if next to coast) and Land Removal would turn the province into a coast.
Similar race specific productions should be available for each race besides just infernals with their burning land.
16.
Ability to release a city and have city in an alliance with strong relations with you (or vassal) and upon release you are asked, which race should be dominant. Races available in your entire empire should determine availability.
So that if you have 3 cities each with 10 population and 20% elf and 80% dwarf. You could select the city closest to the forest and release it as a fully elf city and it would remove all the Elf’s from all your other cities and remove all the dwarf from the released city. And add -2 unhappiness for every population moved this way. As well as a financial cost.
This would have easy to see benefits in the form of being able to specialize your alliances by moving the dwarfs to the mountains, elfs to the forests and sea folk to the coast.
17.
Defeated heroes should eventually respawn in your city with a 1-5% chance every turn depending on how you’ve played. They should appear at 0.1% health in your capital and with 0 exp. There should be specific items in every map that when held by the unit that kills a hero, the hero will not respawn.
18.
Distance from the city had a penalty to food/prod/gold.
To offset this, every province produces 1 more of everything except for those that produce nothing at all. Some produce +2 when compared to non-modded.
Every one plot of distance from the city center reduces production of each good by 1.
So that if there are 3 plains, each 1 further away from the city than the previous.
First one would produce 4/3/3 or so, next one 3/2/2 next one 2/1/1 and last one 1/0/0. This combined with a improvement system where every improvement also penalizes by half of what it gives (+2 to gold will create a -1 food or production) would make the outermost edges of the city usually those with the most specialised production. So the innermost parts would most likely fill with those least penalizing (+1 upgrades such as cottages and windmills) the outermost edges would fill with those with the highest bonuses and penalties, such as mines and farms. So if you have a 0/1/0 plot with 0 food 1 prod and 0 gold, you would naturally prefer to build a mine on it, since the penalty would be discounted. So a it would be a 0/4/0 or so.
In total this would produce a system where improvements are rare and tend to specialize in noticable patterns with the least effective in the center and the most effective in the edges. Making raids devastating and forcing the player to actually defend his borders and not turtle in a city.
19. Using spring or any other similar talents that turn a type of land to another should result in a penalty hit to a faction that considers that land their primary.
Aka, using spring on desert should upset the desert folk and so on.
---
There are a few more but my memory isn't what it used to be. I'll post them as I remember them.
All in all these updates would make a world, that by the very late game, would still be mostly uninhabited, uninhabitable and empty.
If it works as I intend, on a gigantic map travelling from one place to another would take roughly the same time as now in terms of comparing it to building or research. But it would almost certainly force you to go through large uninhabited areas, forests, marshes and so on. Where a Human taking a Dwarf city would find they only control the “gates” of the city and the dwarf’s have collapsed the rest and you don’t get the same bonuses. Where a city that is worth considerably to the enemy might be worth nothing to you.
Where it might really be a smart idea to torch an enemy capital instead of capturing it only to build a city right next to where it used to be.
This should, produce a world that is closer to the lore of FfH2, where large areas remain wilderness till the very end and where you are as much at war with the environment as you are with your enemies. Where just trying to get a few cities running so well that they don’t collapse will take a majority of your tax base.
So, any comments?
