Rethinking Civs- Put States Literally Everywhere.

[civilizationfanatic2000]

Take a look at this map of Europe (and West Asia, and North Africa, and a bit of Central Asia) in 300 B.C Notice anything different?

There's a crapload of states. We need to rethink the common definition of Civs in our game- instead of organized empires, we could also think tribes and city-states. Relating back to my previous culture thread, each Culture would belong to a Culture Group. French, German, American, etc would all belong to the Western Culture Group. Culture Groups would shift over time, such as Roman culture splitting into the modern Western cultures we have nowadays.

What I would also change is what happens when your state gets destroyed. In Civilization, when your last city is razed, that's it you lose. But 1. In New Civ, the city is much less important and 2. You wouldn't lose when you lose your state. Instead, you could continue playing as a state that shares your Culture Group.

In Civ VI, the Gallic civilization would be a massive empire blocking Rome from expanding north of the Alps. In New Civs, the Gallic 'civilization' would be a mash of states like the ones you see in the image. New states can form at any time, provided certain prerequisites are filled. Which makes for a more dynamic game- a bunch of states dating back to 4000 BCE surviving all that time and not changing in the slightest, or hundreds of states, tribes, etc appearing all across the world map all the time. Sorry this is so short I have to go

 

[Henri Christophe]

Do you want to breakup European civilization in even smaller ones? I don't like this idea. Europe is already over represented in this game

 

[civilizationfanatic2000]

Do you want to breakup European civilization in even smaller ones? I don't like this idea. Europe is already over represented in this game

This applies to not only Europe, but Asia, Africa, the Americas, Oceania, etc



Look at Asia and Africa.

 

[civilizationfanatic2000]

that same map, 350 years earlier. There would be of course, limits to this, see how harsh areas like jungle or deserts or taiga or high mountains don't form states on their own?

Wondering what Boris thinks of this.

 

[Henri Christophe]

I don't understand your point. Do you want more ancient civilizations?

 

[civilizationfanatic2000]

I don't understand your point. Do you want more ancient civilizations?

i want more states that the player and a.i can play as and advance

the world was filled with dozens of kingdoms all over, but in civs its too monolithic. me no likey

 

[Saxo Grammaticus]

Generally, having a more populated world sounds intriguing, but I see it running up against two issues. First, your idea of states that exist independent of one's last city seems to be far into Paradox territory. Second, overall, it seems highly dependent on other gameplay mechanics. For example, I suspect a good deal of players enjoy the district game. At the very least, there have been complaints about AI district placement. In a more populated version of Civilization one would have to be careful to balance the traditional canvas quality of the map.

 

[Zaarin]

Civilizations are not polities. E.g., on your first map, everyone on Great Britain from the Brigantes south belongs to the British civilization, no matter how many polities they're divided into. This would be great for an Ancient-era Paradox game (which I would looooove to see happen), but not for Civ. A good alternative, though, would be what a lot of people, myself included, have hoped for Civ7, which is upgrading city-states to minor civilizations.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

There's a crapload of states. We need to rethink the common definition of Civs in our game- instead of organized empires, we could also think tribes and city-states. Relating back to my previous culture thread, each Culture would belong to a Culture Group. French, German, American, etc would all belong to the Western Culture Group. Culture Groups would shift over time, such as Roman culture splitting into the modern Western cultures we have nowadays.

What I would also change is what happens when your state gets destroyed. In Civilization, when your last city is razed, that's it you lose. But 1. In New Civ, the city is much less important and 2. You wouldn't lose when you lose your state. Instead, you could continue playing as a state that shares your Culture Group.

I'm not a fan of this if this means things like Korea or Japan turning into China just because they would belong to an "oriental" culture group.

In Civ VI, the Gallic civilization would be a massive empire blocking Rome from expanding north of the Alps. In New Civs, the Gallic 'civilization' would be a mash of states like the ones you see in the image. New states can form at any time, provided certain prerequisites are filled. Which makes for a more dynamic game- a bunch of states dating back to 4000 BCE surviving all that time and not changing in the slightest, or hundreds of states, tribes, etc appearing all across the world map all the time.

I'd rather them turn into minor civilizations, or act like the current barbarian clans do now, then making hundreds of sub-states in a single civilization.

 

[BuchiTaton]

I rather would like more interesting, useful, detailed and diverse city-states and "barbarians" to represent all those cultures/peoples.

The playable factions being mainly imperialistic urban civilizations is a good criterion to keep consistency. Actually I kind of dislike the "oddball" civs that do not realy fit that model, but still would love to have those represented by better non-playable factions.

 

[Krajzen]

I kind of get your reasoning OP, but the problem is it would be simply enormouy messy in practice. Paradox games make it work (for Eurafrasia minus Siberia and Sahara I mean) but they have extremely different technical and design paradigms that allow a crapload of states on the map.

Also, the very image you have posted counters your own argument, as
1) There is alot of space not occupied by any color at all
2) By 300 BC Finnic, Baltic, Slavic and Germanic tribes were anything but "civilizations", with an abyss of backwardness and disorganisation between them and Celtic tribes (not even major empires, Celts). They were masses of tribes with very primitive agriculture, still heavily relying on hunting and foraging, and having very limited metallurgy, no urban centers of any kind, even pseudo desperate ones.
3) In fact, putting 'Slavs' here is very suspicious as this entire area is almost a black hole of historiography until like 6th century AD where we get the very very first serious historical mentions of Slavic people... And they are still masses of tribes on a very low level of development (at least in Poland most of us doesn't think of civilization in Poland as appearing before 10th century).

Or how do you represent precoonial Siberia, Australia, Central and South Africa, Brazil, Argentina and North America as entirely covered by states? It simply happens sometimes in history than vast swathes of land have an extremely low pop density despite being potentially fertile (because for example locals have no proper crops to use).
And if you just turn random tiny indigenous peoples civilizations they you westernize them and ignore their culture in the same time.


I think the game map should be covered not by states or barbarians (ugh) but by Tribes, and they all should be dynamic entities with basic diplomacy, migrsting and developing and fighting each other etc, with some of them funcitoning as barbarians, others tuning i to city states, and some of them even rsrely spawning some randomly chosen civ from a regular roster.

 

[civilizationfanatic2000]

I'm not a fan of this if this means things like Korea or Japan turning into China just because they would belong to an "oriental" culture group.

if you swap to one state from another, that doesn't mean that they suddenly shift into the culture you were last playing as. If you play as China and get destroyed- that doesn't mean any Korean state or Japanese state you take over becomes Chinese. Besides, Korean and Japonic are two different cultures separate from Sinic.

I kind of get your reasoning OP, but the problem is it would be simply enormouy messy in practice. Paradox games make it work (for Eurafrasia minus Siberia and Sahara I mean) but they have extremely different technical and design paradigms that allow a crapload of states on the map.

this is part of the fun, you see, it might lag your game when 100 tribal polities spawn out of nowhere, but 1. that only happens in empire breaks ups and 2. you can force them to fight each other through politics, so you don't have to fight 100 separate nations all at once.

1) There is alot of space not occupied by any color at all
2) By 300 BC Finnic, Baltic, Slavic and Germanic tribes were anything but "civilizations", with an abyss of backwardness and disorganisation between them and Celtic tribes (not even major empires, Celts). They were masses of tribes with very primitive agriculture, still heavily relying on hunting and foraging, and having very limited metallurgy, no urban centers of any kind, even pseudo desperate ones.
3) In fact, putting 'Slavs' here is very suspicious as this entire area is almost a black hole of historiography until like 6th century AD where we get the very very first serious historical mentions of Slavic people... And they are still masses of tribes on a very low level of development (at least in Poland most of us doesn't think of civilization in Poland as appearing before 10th century).

Might be due to lack of historical information. Those colors you see are I think supposed to mark out tribal boundaries- i.e "This tribe lives here". Although that would cause much lag...

Hm.

Maybe, instead of tribal polities being represented as colors on the map, leave the map blank for those areas. When mousing over a region, it would show what tribe lives there, and if you click it shows them what tribe they hate and which ones they like, as well as their general opinion of you. You can then influence them with money and other things, such as attacking one of your neighbors.

However, organized civilizations (like Qin, Chu, and so on) would still be colors on the map. Would that be a better idea?

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

if you swap to one state from another, that doesn't mean that they suddenly shift into the culture you were last playing as. If you play as China and get destroyed- that doesn't mean any Korean state or Japanese state you take over becomes Chinese. Besides, Korean and Japonic are two different cultures separate from Sinic.

If we're going by languages as cultures why make a whole culture group called Western?

I'm just wondering if America could become Germany or France, because that's what I thought was assumed in your OP?

 

[Henri Christophe]

If we're going by languages as cultures why make a whole culture group called Western?

I would like to see a great Western nation lead by NATO

 

[civilizationfanatic2000]

If we're going by languages as cultures why make a whole culture group called Western?

because france, Germany, spain, America, etc, share common values tracing form germanic states and the roman empire

I'm just wondering if America could become Germany or France, because that's what I thought was assumed in your OP?

no, but germany or france can become America, if they settle a continent and the colonies on that continent rebel.

 

[Zaarin]

because france, Germany, spain, America, etc, share common values tracing form germanic states and the roman empire

That is...very debatable. Even before the Protestant Reformation, France, Germany, and Spain had radically different cultures. Americans and Englanders are often surprised at how little we share in common in terms of culture and values, to say nothing of our more distant cousins on the Continent.

 

[Evie]

Ah, yes, because clearly France should be founding a civilization that was created by English colonies, instead of, you know, founding its own colonies *cough*.

And Zaarin is (as usual, really) correct. "Mix of Germanic and Roman" is a gross oversimplification for what was really a much more complex process.

For a start, except maybe in the immediate surroundings of Rome, the "Roman" culture was itself already a local mix of Roman and pre-existing pre-Roman localized cultures - which themselves were sometime already mixes of other pre-existing local cultures (and let's not forget the Greeks and Phoenicians in the Mediterannean region).

Then there's the fact that pre-Romans (even if we call them "Celtic", which not all of them were) and post-Roman (even if we call them Germanic) were really a collection of interrelated culture, not a cultural monolith, that were each quite distinct - a Frank was not an Angle nor either of them a Goth (and even Visigoths and Ostrogoths each went their own ways), and Burgundians and Lombards and so forth all come into it too...), so reducing it to "celtic" and "germanic" influence erases a lot of distinction.

And finally of course there's the fact that over the course of centuries cultures evolve as much in response to their local environment and their own history than in response to their roots, taking their own widely different directions along the way.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

because france, Germany, spain, America, etc, share common values tracing form germanic states and the roman empire

China, Japan, and Korea also have similarities in history due to the influence of both Confucianism and Buddhism. I'm just not understanding the logic of lumping Western groups into one culture, but at the same time saying that China, Japan, and Korea are vastly different from each other.

Not saying I agree with the lumping of them either.

no, but germany or france can become America, if they settle a continent and the colonies on that continent rebel.

Well that's a whole different topic than what was presented.

 

[BuchiTaton]

If a GAME system have Europe and Anglocolonial together in a "western" group then it would also put Japan and Korea in the "sinitic" one.

Also even if we agree that there are many things that difference "western" nations and put them together is simplistic, the point is that all of them still share common elements that differentiate them from others groups. So for a GAME where you should decide some degree of grouping the "western" make sense when you would have others like maybe "sinitic", "middle eastern", etc.

For example on game all the civs are basically the same, but sets of civs with shared regional elements (units, techs, civics, districts, etc.) could be an interesting change. With that in mind which design would America civ share, the european, middle eastern or native american? I think we all know what OP mean.

 

[Zaarin]

With that in mind which design would America civ share, the european, middle eastern or native american?

Well, on release Brazil had Aztec architecture and Jaguar Knight Swordsmen.

At any rate, I'm still opposed to the kind of massive lumping OP wants. Yes, of course we could do that. Since we're all a single species, we could have a single "Human" civilization if we want to. I just don't see the appeal of that kind of broad lumping.